Blog posts

One of the best wedding gifts my hubbilicious and I received was Beth Hensperger's The Bread Bible. After reading the introduction and first chapter, I decided to follow in Hensperger's footsteps and do what she did, twice: teach myself more about the craft and art of bread baking by baking every recipe in a bread book, in order. And so it began, on August 14th......

I have a houseguest visiting from New Mexico.  His theory is that "healthy" bread is bread with lots of seeds in it.  We went over to the "Grateful Bread" store in Sacramento and he picked up a loaf of something they call "Woodstock" bread, a whole wheat loaf with lots of seeds in it.  My friend thinks it's named after the little yellow bird in the Peanuts comic strip who would no doubt consider birdseed a gourmet addition to bread. 

It was pretty good, so I had a hand at trying to duplicate it.

Besides the Whole Wheat Breads, I also baked a SFBI Miche and Hamelman's "Pain au Levain with Mixed Sourdough Starters" this weekend. 

Ho hum.  More bread.  My N-teenth batch of Proth5’s “Bear-guettes” and another try at bagels using a variation on the Krakowski formula in the upcoming Inside the Jewish Bakery.

Looking to clear up the number of packages containing small amounts of flour, seeds, grains, etc., I noticed that Hamelman mentions in his description of one of his five grain loaves that it looks nice as a large boule. Having neither the time, the patience, nor, most important, the space in the fridge (I like these retarded overnight) I took him at his word and made up the loaf below. It contains at least three different kinds of seeds, all toasted, cracked rye, bulghur, steel cut oats, dark whole wheat, flax, flaxseed meal, who knows what else.

……just so that you know I do not live by baguettes alone. :p

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Before I start...... Hope all you US-based TFLers are safe and unharmed in any way in the hurricane.  Please know that my prayer is with you.  (Let's forget just for now that I'm an atheist....)

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I've been continuing practicing my baguettes and have progress to report. I've lowered my hydration yet again to 71% and the dough is even easier to shape and more importantly score. While there's still some room for improvement, I was able get some nice ears on the last few loaves.

I've been going through a wing-it phase, experimenting with creating sourdough cakes, brownies and other goodies I'd previously only made using more conventional recipes. I wasn't intending to make chocolate sourdough bread at all, but did so on an impulse when one of my wing-it episodes landed me with a bit too much chocolate and walnut cake mixture.

Hello,
My neighbor had a bumper crop of Transparent apples this year and generously shared with us :^)
I used some to make Ciril Hitz's Apple Kuchen, from his book Baking Artisan Pastries and Breads.
The foundation for the Kuchen is Rum-Raisin Brioche! :^)
 .. the baked Kuchen

...a crumb shot

A very delicious recipe.  This is my first test version using, fresh Black Mission figs, the orginal recipe from 'The Art of Wood Fired Cooking' by Andrea Mugnaini uses, dried figs and is baked in a wood fired oven '.  This book has many of the basics for mastering your wfo and, full of tasty recipes and lovely photos.