Blog posts

This is my second attempt at the multigrain Struan from Peter Reinhart’s wonderful book: Whole grain Breads. This is no easy dough to deal with, and I remember now why i have chosen to put it off for a second trial. The high proportion of soaked grains (I used some seeds too), held loosely by 100% whole wheat flour, some butter, and honey; makes for a very sticky dough.

In a way, today was “really” the first day of my retirement. Our granddaughters are back in their parents' keeping. I'm not teaching this week. I discovered a couple of changes in my cooking and baking, compared to my approach pre-retirement.

A couple weeks ago I got a new cookbook, the recently updated version of Margaret Fox’s Morning Food.  It is chock full of great recipes for muffins, scones, omelettes, fritattas and other a.m. goodies.  It is also a great read, written with humor and charm.

I decided to go back and make the Tartine Country Loaf for a change since I've been making a lot of whole grain mix loaves lately.  It is still one of the best breads for me . . . I just love it fried in butter, slathered with Nutella or fig jam.   

85% CM ABC unmalted
15% CM Organic Stone Ground Whole Wheat
80% Water
20% Leaven
2% Salt

I'm guessing I'm not alone here in trying different types of flour whenever I see some, leaving me over time with partial bags of a wide range of product. Given that, I thought: what would a REALLY multi-grain baguette using odds-and-end flour?

We just love kjknits English Muffin recipe and make it all the time.  Well, we make them when we run out of them - without fail.  We just can’t stand not having them in the freezer. It is just not done.

We always tweak the recipe a little bit.  This time we used 1 ½ C of AP, 1/4 C each of Durum Atta and White Whole Wheat. 

It might not be December yet, so not THE time for Christmas stollen but don’t fool yourself by its name. This bread is just tasty and awesome all year round with some butter on it with your coffee at coffee time... This recipe is based on an old Dutch recipe that was published in the 60’s and I kind of made it my own after giving it several tries. So here is my version of the recipe.

Christmas stollen (recipe for one loaf)

I'm a novice weekend baker who's been, of course, baking for about two (frustrating) months... Having said that, prior to my not-so-successful challah, I had never handled whole wheat flour, used a soaker or preferment (and thus the "delayed fermentation method"), or even braided dough strands. So, it was reasonable to expect that I'd encounter a few problems during the bread making process...

Many TFL baker's have blogged on this bread, and for good reason. It is delicious. I haven't made it since last October. Today, I made three 568 g boules. I started with a liquid starter which I converted to a firm starter and fed twice before mixing the final dough. The formed loaves were cold retarded for about 16 hours then proofed at 85 dF for 2 1/2 hours before baking.