Blog posts

I have been baking nothing but the basic country loaf now for several months, and my breads have always come out pretty good, though varying considerably in flavor.

I am a weekend baker and have wanted to get my bakes done early Saturday instead of late Saturday night or early Sunday.  So I decided to take another stab at doing things backwards.

Friday morning, I took my starter out of the fridge (last fed, a week earlier), and created the leaven.

Extra Fiber and whole grain with this bagel. It taste fantastic. As soon as they came out of the oven, they are all gone!! I gotta make another batch this week :P

soda Bath

Crumb Shot

I made the sour rye today following David's post and spraying the loaves with water instead of the corn starch glaze as suggested by arlo and PMcCool. I sprayed the loaves well with water just before putting them into the oven and again after 15 min. and again after 10 min. and again after the temperature of the loaf was 205 degrees. I turned off the oven and let the loaves sit for 5 min. with the oven door ajar. 

The crust is very firm, there is a nice shine and I'm pleased. 

This weeks bake is 16% Organic Sprouted Spelt Sourdough….

Slash and Bake Before...

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Slash and Bake After...

I have been reading a bit about the various ways in which home bakers use a cast iron combo cooker to produce some spectacular loaves, and was struck by the posts by people who skip the "pre heat" step (either for safety or fuel efficiency purposes), and seem to see no issue in the final bake.  Given it would seem much easier to work with a room temperature combo cooker vs a 500 degree version, I wanted to do a side by side comparison to see if there was much of a difference in the finished product.

Yesterday I made a from-scratch deep dish pizza using the recipe in The Great Chicago Pizza Cookbook. The crust turned out beautifully, or so I thought until I tried to cut it. It wasn't burnt, but was hard as a rock! We had to saw through it and it was just too much chewy to enjoy the rest of the ingredients. 

Does anyone have any suggestions? The recipe calls for 1/2 c of yellow cornmeal and I wasn't sure if that was the issue or if I should forego par baking or what? There are photos below. Any and all advice welcome!!! 

Today I baked up some levain boules and a Tartine Country Loaf.  I can't shake this sourdough kick since returning from San Francisco.  I tweaked my roaster/steaming method a bit to enhance the Tartine crust caramelization.  I am very happy with the results.  The adjustments to the steaming method really made the crust thin and crispy, and added a more complex flavour.

The combination of dreary weather foiling my landscape photography and a new camera resulted in a post bake shutterbug frenzy. 

Another batch of Pane Maggiore. This time with no intention I made another change. i built the levains (1/2 rye sour stiff/1/2 white wheat liquid) and got exhausted by mix time so i retarded them to finish the following day. I decreased my total pre fermented flour in the recipe to about 15% as this dough gets very active and this would give the time for folds in accordance with ferment times. 1 hour autolyse followed by a soft finished mix. Then three sets of folds at 50 minute intervals and divided at the 3 hour mark.