Blog posts

Finally, I got over my procrastination of making baguettes and got on with making one.

My first attempt wasn't great and wasn't too bad either. There are things that I've learnt and will take them to my next bake. There were no issues with the taste and the dough strengths and extensibility. 

The issues I had with this bake were scoring, underestimation of the baguette size when it's fully-proof (i.e. it extended beyond my baking tray), baguette transfer from couche to baking tray.

I was so inspired by Pamela's 'xiapete' post on the ZaZu resturants style Chanterelle mushroom and goat cheese pizza, she baked in Nov. of 09, I've been craving one ever since.  I finally found some lovely Chanterelle mushrooms.  I also baked a pizza Margarita style.  It was served with a lovely little organic chicken, I stuffed with fresh garlic, rosemary, lemon, s&p. and, some roasted peppers!  Roasted it all at the oven door while the fire was getting ready for the pizza's.

I do bake by hand but as I work nearly 50 hours a week,I sometimes have to resort to a machine - what are your experiences??On my way out to work this morning, I put a ciabatta style loaf on to cook.It's a great recipe which I'm willing to share if anyone is interested.Love putting the machine on timer overnight and waking up to the smell of fresh baked bread

I've baked several things during the last weeks and I really wanted to post some pictures here, but first I had a foodborne infection from bad olives, then my camera went to die. I hope I will be able to post more regularly during the next weeks.

[size=20]Work in progress: rolls[/size]

My old bread site, joesbread.com, is now down. I tried making bread and failed to get any real flavor into the loaf. I restarted making bread and am now trying to capture that amazing flavor which escaped me on my first try. Perhaps this will be the time and I can start astounding people with wonderful tasting bread.

I was inspired by those trying to improve the grigne on their bread by using metal bowls or aluminum baking tins to cover their loaves.  Since I was doing a batch of "local rye", I thought I'd give it a try myself.

This is a crazy looking bread from the town of Matera in Southern Italy made with durum flour and a natural sourdough starter…  I had tried making this bread before with the durum flour, but made the dough too wet so it wasn't very easy to shape.  This most recent attempt was reasonably successful.  What makes this bread interesting is that it is shaped after the final proof and dumped into the oven.  Please see the links below about this bread and how to make it...

I have been wanting to try this method for sometime and have just been putting it off until today.  Of coarse I had to pick today, my kitchen still in some construction mode after remodeling my shower, it had leaked through on the kitchen ceiling, an appointment with a glass and mirror installer...and today is Mike's birthday, so everything is in a bit of a rush.  I baked a couple of mulitigrain loaves, and upon doing this I decided to try a new method of creating steam in my oven.  I'm convinced the only way I'm going to get steam that's not continually 'vented' ou

After 27 hours it was finally time to feed my starter....1 cup of regular, all-purpose flour seemed almost anti-climatic after the long day of anticipation and worry. Maybe it was the dry milk, but it just didn't look like it had obtained the yogurt consistency I needed. Before unwrapping the plastic, I couldn't help but worry: was there really yeast fermenting in there? I was only barely decent at creating the magic that was bread using store-bought insta-active-dry yeast; was I over-reaching by trying to create my own....?