Blog posts

Thank you, David, for the title (AKA the little SD starter that could); it really was a long series of events! It began Friday night when I was trying again to finish part one of Little Dorrit, but, alas, I fell asleep again. When I awoke, with my neck aching, I stumbled into the kitchen and began throwing together the levain for Leader's sourdough rye loaves. Earlier in the day I had calculated that I needed to get this going just before bed if I wanted to bake the loaves the following day.

Last week, I baked Susan from San Diego's “Original Sourdough.” My description can be found at:

http://tfl.thefreshloaf.com/node/11321/susan-san-diego039s-quotoriginal-sourdoughquot

Today's bake was Daniel Leader's Whole Wheat Genzano Country Bread, from his Local Breads book.  This bread combines a biga naturale for flavor with yeast for shorter, more predictable fermentation times.

xaipete made me do it. The crust was OK., "nothing extry" as we say in Alabama.  It was a wild yeast dough that had been in the freezer for a couple months. It was very nice to work with but didn't rise too much . It did get nice and chewy and since I baked in a 550 oven with a really preheated stone the bottom was nicely browned in places. The topping was what made it so perfect. My sister in law brought me olive salad from NOLA. It is the best and since that was my home long ago I miss it and was so glad to get the gift.

I always like the positive approach. If have been able to progress with sourdough, the starter is really developing nicely. Last week I made my first sourdough from this starter, also somes pain ancienne. You can see that the crumb of the ancienne looks nicer (left), but the sourdough has more taste.

|

OK, so I know it sounds like an oxymoron, but it works! Baguette dough is one of my favorite pizza doughs because it is easy to handle, has just a hint of sweetness, and bakes up as a sturdy, crisp, and thin platform (no sagging) that works no matter whether the topping be light or heavy. I baked this in the oven on my new stone (I didn't want to risk repeating last Friday's BBQed-beyond-all-recognition pizza). I had planned to top it with some pesto and fresh basil, but the pesto had molded and the basil, shriveled, so I just went with sauce and fresh mozzarella.

Summary of This Months Breads - The Obsession Begins.
Composed in terrible quality cell phone pictures (I am currently without a camera!)

Posted on www.evilshenanigans.com - 4/3/2009

Today is my birthday!!  I won't tell you how old I am ... that would just depress me.  But, I will tell you what does not depress me ...

Cupcakes! 

well, I didn't have internet access for a couple of days, so I didn't use any recipe like I usually do. I was going to make a whole-wheat loaf with a soaker (which I decided to leave out on the counter overnight) and a cold proof. then, I noticed that we had some roasted pine-nuts left, which are amazingly delicious. I decided to add them into the dough. I kept worrying because I thought leaving the soaker overnight would be too long, even though I heard Peter Reinhart talk about doing that in some video I watched...

This bread worked great for me. I used the starter from WGB instead of Hamelman's. I started the levain yesterday afternoon and this morning it looked and smelled just like it was suppose to. I was out of bread, so I finished the recipe, baked one loaf today and have one left that I retarded at noon in the refrigerator. (Let's see now, it's suppose to be good for 18 hours in the fridge at 42ºF. Now that was really good planning on my part because now I've got to get up at 5 am!)