Blog posts

Hi folks. Long time between blog posts for me. Been baking as much as ever but got lazy with taking pics and doing write-ups. I've fallen into a comfortable 3-bake-per-week rhythm cycling through our favourites, which these days are mostly variations on my pain de campagne. I like this rhythm after 3 years of working through scores of different breads. I've found it's a different type of learning, focusing on just a few breads - an incremental progression towards quality and consistency. Nice after all the experimenting, but perhaps not so conducive to regular posting, for me at least.

Made a loaf of Laurel's Buttermilk Bread today and, as is typical, I simply did two bulk rises before shaping, and then did the final rise in a cooler with a cup of boiling water inside. I also reduced the liquid to about 170g water and 170g buttermilk. The difference, however, is that I completely forgot about it  after shaping and didn't remember that the bread was rising at all until it had proofed for more than 2 hours! Much longer than I ususually let it go.

Decided to start with one of Ken Forkish's easier recipes and made the Saturday Bread.  It turned out pretty good and I would say it is probably the nicest looking bread that I have made on my short journey to bread geekdom.  Finally got the nice rings from my wicker basket (you should have seen some of my past disasters).  I used a czech flour to flour the basket - it was a coarse wheat and I think that made it less sticky than the previous AP I was using (didnt have to add rice flour). 

I can't help it. I'm so proud of my son's first bread. A month ago, I visited them for Thanksgiving and left him with some of my sourdough starter. I baked once while there, with Joel watching. Yesterday, he made his first on his own San Joaquin Sourdough.

I aske Joel how it tasted. He said, "Kind of like yours. Great."

Not too shabby, eh?

According to Floyd's clock, it has been exactly a year since I emerged from lurkdom @ TFL.  So it's a good day to thank our gracious and attentive host for his hospitality at The Loafers' Inn, and as well to thank Floyd's far-flung guests who have enlivened and enriched my bread journey so generously over the past twelve months.

Stollen is one of my favourite Xmas breads, in fact all breads.

Not surprising given my fondness for fruit, cherries and marzipan….

Not fond of dark rum though…a tipple of white rum, yes!!

Sublime…

Just gorgeous with Marzipan

What's fun about working with natural yeast is that I can throw together anything and just play around.So I just watched a couple of videos on bagels, and made 4 bagels of my own.The photos are from my phone, so they're not very clear.

A neighbor and I have a 15 year old tradition of exchanging baked goods at this time of year. His wife always bakes a delicious rum and nutmeg-flavored cake, and I give them a loaf of bread. This year, my gift was a 1.5 kg loaf of Hamelman's pain au levain. 

They say "fences make good neighbors," but I think exchange of fresh-baked goodies does too.

For the holidays, I decided to move away from the typical four ingredients and go with somethimg richer.  I remembered that when I was perusing the BBA book, I found a recipe that caught my eye - Portuguese Sweet Bread.  I hope you enjoy some of the pics tha I took along the way.  The bread turned out great, even though I was missing some of the key ingredients, like shortening and lemon and orange extracts.