Blog posts

I've been incredibly lazy for the past three weeks or so. Beats me why. I'd like to blame the unbearably hot summer we've had but I know myself too well. No excuses. Just lazy.

It's turning cooler and just in time! I'm running out of the 12 loaves I baked a few weeks back to give me the practice and confidence I need in proofing and shaping bread. I've said it before and I'll say it again: practice, Practice, PRACTICE!

The slew of baguettes that I made the other day for my in-laws yielded a set of Hamelman Pain au Levain w/WW that I wasn't really thrilled with.  The crumb was too tight, the baguettes seemed to lack some standard amount of girth that I expect from them and all along the pathway from mix to bake something just didn't feel right.  A nice part about baking is that I get to do a do-over.  These seemed more "right" to me starting at mix time and beyond.

Tried a new recipe from Michael Kalanty. Turned out nice, 3 folds, let ferment over night, warm up, form place in basket, let raise bake 500 in a dutch oven. Turned out very nice. It really helps to have a nice 100% starter, well fed. 

I tried making oatmeal porridge bread. Follow Chad Robertsons Tartine #3 Very high hydration, 4 folds over 3 hours form, basket, overnight in fridge bake 500 right from the oven. Very tasty. 

Borodinsky bread was being baked long before the Battle of Borodino that supposedly led to its name and way before the Commies in Russia decided to standardize the recipe to make sourcing the ingredients for the bread much easier.  When the Soviet government says this is the way this bread is to be made then that is it – no variants or options allowed.  Free people don’t live like that of course.

Sprouted rye

In the spirit of my latest experiments with yeast water/SD combo and because I had some wholegrain kamut flour leftover this was my last bake before a 10 days trip to San Francisco for Oracle Open World event.

today's bake consisted of one of my favorite breads, which i call stirato out of habit but is more like ciabatta in its current form. it started as an Italian stiratto bread from the village baker, after i took the full scale professional recipe and toned it down for the home baker, as the home recipes are aimed at more amateur bakers and are over simplified. since then i have made many changes to it, until i got a bread that i find to be more my own than the original formula.

The story is going to be told in pictures today. ;-)

The only changes were that I added 50 g of liquid and subbed out 100 of water for buttermilk.

hello fresh loafers,

this is my first blog post, so first let me introduce myself. i am a serious home baker and foodie from Israel, and have been baking breads for the last five or so years.

i hope to share with you in the future a few the recipes i have developed over time, and share photos of recent bakes, while discussing some of the obstacles of baking in Israel and how to overcome them.

happy baking,

etamar

We like hummus and generally buy it "homemade" at a neighborhood Armenian deli. We also buy the pita bread they sell, which is made locally but not in the deli. It's sold in plastic bags, six to a bag. It's not terrible. 

I recently checked an Israeli cookbook out of the library. It had a recipe for pita, not the first I had seen, but the book made a big deal about the superiority of fresh-baked pita over the kind I had been buying. So I made a batch.