Blog posts

I haven’t been around TFL much for the last few months.    Work demands, some travelling, and a bum leg conspired to keep me from baking much.  And most of my baking has been ordinary…hardly blog-worthy.

I’ve missed you all, and thought I’d pop in with a report on some recent bakes.

I baked up more of Hamelman’s 5-Grain Levain, this time making one batch into 6 mini-batards.  They freeze nicely and one of these loaves is good for a couple days of hardy yumminess.

I have been baking regularly on weekends, but haven’t had the chance to post a blog. Lately, my parents, whom I bake mostly for have complained that the crusts of my breads were too chewy, and demanded a softer version of my hearth multigrain bread. Butter, and/or enrichments came to mind instantly as these soften the crust and crumb, in addition to the usage of a bread pan instead of baking on hearth which also contributes to bread softness.

So 9 weeks later and I'm still with it.  In fact I look forward to this more than most things right now.  It's fun, refreshing, and educational.  I've been wanting to do a Rye and so here we go.  As I've mentioned previously I need to have retarded loaves so i can bake the quanitity without overproofing.  And this quanitty may go up starting next week.  Next trouble is I'll need a larger fridge.  I'm gonna have to get coolers and ice to move our food too for the night and make room for more loaves in the fridge.  

In the month since our trip to Scotland and Ireland, baking around here has been rather hit or miss.  No, scratch that, baking around here has been hit and miss.  Consequently, this post is sort of a catch-all for the this's and that's going on in my kitchen.

One bake was the honey oatmeal loaf from the KAF Whole Grains Cookbook.  I love that stuff; it's hearty and moist and hefty and just a little bit sweet.  Makes a great sandwich, too.

We decide to use some left overs for this bake from the last bake of hot dog buns.  The left overs were the pickled onion, red pepper, tomato and poblano toppings that we added some kalamata olives too and then caramelized the whole mix to get rid of the moisture, add a roasted flavor and send this bred further down an Italian path.

as you know i love blue :) to obtain a significant natural blue is quite impossible. found a method to dehydrate the blue pea flower and grind them to powder. check this out http://www.wikihow.com/Dry-Rose-Petals 

 July is the hottest month of the year in Central California. Today it was 99 ºF, the first day in 15 with a high temperature below 100 ºF. Tomorrow we expect it to be back above 100. Now, it's hotter in Phoenix (not to mention Death Valley), but still ….

This was supposed to be a 36 hour sourdough but I got stuck in my favorite airport O'Hare for about 4 hours longer than expected and didn't get home until 1:30 AM.  Due to the extra hours in the refrigerator and the blueberry beer I used this one ended up real sour.

I wanted to make a mostly whole grain bread and this one came in at around 72%.  I used freshly ground flour for the levain and for the main dough I added some First Clear for some gluten strength and Durum because it's one of my favorite flours.

Anyone browsing through TFL will sooner, rather than later, come across mention of the Tartine Bread Book. I'll confess, I don't have a copy of this, but it does seem to be one of the go-to books at the moment for sourdough, no-knead, and lots of other techniques. Likewise, if you want to make enriched breads, there's really only one port-of-call, and that's Cresci by Massari and Zoia.