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I've just gotten back after a month travelling, most of which was spent in Vietnam. One of the most notable influences of French colonisation is the proliferation of baguettes in the Vietnamese diet. In Saigon (that's what the locals call their manic city, and it's a far more romantic and exotic name than Ho Chi Minh City, so I'm going with it), most baguettes are the rice flour ones that appear in Vietnamese bakeries all over Australia, and probably the States.

I suspect that I'm not the only one that has had an impulse or two to color out side the lines. This time, I got caught up in reading too much and just had to do something I hadn't found in my books. I had read about using using large preferments that were bigas or poolishs but I had to try a pate fermentee. I wanted some bread to go with the all purpose red sauce I was working on and thought that I could make pizza dough for the next night in the same batch. No problem, right?

Equality and Diversity Competition

My Level 2 Bakery students are very competitive.   Following on from Faye's Nettle Bread, and their determined, difficult yet successful adventures into Practical Exams, the group came up with a theme for their own entry into the College's Annual Competition:

"Breads of the World Arise"

See if you can name some of the breads, and where they come from?

Recently we have had a few posts on people having issues getting the No Knead Bread to turn out a wonderful as it should. Jim Lahey has just published a new book called "My Bread" that I thought might be fun to take a look at. It isn't an expensive book at $16.60 and has many variations on his original recipe as well as many popular variations of offerings at the Sullivan Street Bakery.

Basic Country Bread from Tartine Bread

Basic Country Bread from Tartine Bread crumb

I made this following the recipe in the book. The whole wheat flour was freshly milled. The bread was delicious.

Hi everyone, these were incredibly easy to make! I picked up a trick by accident, which lead to a better result in the end. The pan was too big (or so i thought) for the cut rolls when i placed them for their short final prove. I felt the space was too large between each bun. but actually they 'poofed' up so much, it was better that it turned out like that :)

 sorry trying to upload some pics but its not working, will keep trying :)

 okay im trying but the upload keeps failing, apparently its too large, the size, can anyone help me out with this? thanks

Mixed Flowers and Mixed Flours

Having some light buckwheat flour in the refrigerator and stone-ground wholemeal rye in the freezer, it was impossible to resist baking a loaf of Karin's buckwheat rye bread. For this first attempt, the spices were omitted. After an overnight fermentation in the refrigerator, a 750 g section of dough was proofed in an oblong banneton and then baked in a preheated Romertopf clay baker. The result did not disappoint.

Light Buckwheat Rye

:)