Blog posts

Today I made Hamelman's poolish baguettes.   Which retaught me a lesson I've already learned which is that making baguettes is hard.   A month or two ago, I tried the Bouabsa formula several times, without having any idea that it wasn't reasonable to start one's baguette making career with that, so I backed off to Hamelman which I think is quite delicious in its own right.   But it is still hard for the novice bread baker.  

From this side it doesn't look so bad -

I have blogged about baking Pretzels before and this time I had one concern I wanted to be able to improve on-shape. Turns out two improvements were made and I will need expert baker's help to determine what is responsible for the slight texture change -which in my eyes made them perfect!

Hi All,

Just wanted to tease you a little with what I'm working on right now. 

100% Hydration 100% Whole Wheat No Knead Bread

Ingredients:

450g WW (Gold Medal)

50g Malted Barley Flour

100g Firm SD Starter (60% hydr)

500g Water

10g Kosher Salt

1/8 tsp ADY

1111 Total Dough Yield

Process

3:15pm - Mix all ingredients in large mixing bowl with wooden spoon, cover let rest.

Lest any of you consider that my life is all flights across the Pacific and raw squid for breakfast, I recently found myself in driving (in my little green convertible - top down - adorned with my "I Love Okinawa" magnet) from Colorado's Front Range to the great wheat growing region of Kansas for a tour of the Heartland Mill in Marienthall, KS.

Monday:  My garden is bursting with Spring!  The wind is windy and the birds are joyful!  We have 18°C and the furnace has been turned off.  I've pulled a starter out of the fridge.   A firm rye that was not put into long hybernation (do not fear, my pretties, the prepared starter is the jar next to it also looking none the worse from wear.)  It's wonderful and exhausting to be back in Austria.  Lots of garden work and getting used to stairs again.  Back to the starter.

I just thought I would share this! It's a speech about bread that Peter Reinhart did at google's headquarters. I was really suprised to see that he used one of Dante Alighieri's allegories! Peter is such a gifted baker, writer, and rhetorician!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BK5mC_SkIPI&feature=related

I just made the Swedish Rye bread from Peter Reinhar't Bread Baker's Apprentice book.  An interesting bread but it brought back some interesting teenage memories!

Check it out.

http://saltandserenity.com/2010/04/25/37-swedish-rye-bread-2/

Saturday my mother and I decided to spend the day together in the kitchen. It's been awhile since we've done anything like this. We decided to make two cheeses and two breads. She is a complete bread newbie and we are both new to cheesemaking so this was an adventure.

Sometime last week, I built up my rye starter for a run-through of some rye loaves. For some reason or other I ended up with quite a bit more mature rye sourdough than I needed for the loaves I had planned. Too bad to throw it all away I thought, so I put the left-over starter to good use in a pain au levain-style formula. The result was more than I could've hoped for, so darn tasty as a matter of fact, that I worked a bit more on the formula, and baked a few of those rye-sourdough-pain-au-levain breads this weekend.

Boo hoo! My oven broke and I need a new one. The old one was constantly shutting itself off mid-bake. I don't have the luxury to choose any oven I want because I rent from my mother-in-law and she will be paying for it. It must be electric, range-top and not too expensive. Any suggestions? Thank you for your help.