Blog posts

A quick review - Sherry Yard’s the Secret Books of Baking is one of the finest books on Baking.

I baked Gérard Rubaud's pain au levain for the second time this weekend. For background and detailed procedures, see my previous TFL blog entry. Gérard Rubaud Pain au Levain

I used the rice flour in a linen lined basket and WHAT a difference. Sunddenly, as you said, the loaf comes out like teflon and the slash...well all I can say is WOW ! I used about 1 tsp of rice flour and lightly rubbed it into the linen napkin. I turned the shaped pain de campagne into it seam side up and waited 1 1/2 hrs, preheated the iron pot for 30 min at 500 and then turned the loaf out and slashed. Placed in pot/closed/reduced oven to 460 and baked for 30 min lid on and 15 min lid off to 207 degrees.

Wow, I made Floyd's blueberry and cream cheese braids today (started them yesterday) and they are AMAZING! I did one by the book and made the other with a smear of the cream cheese filling sprinkled with chocolate chips, YUMMY! In case you haven't come across his post here is a link:

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/recipes/blueberrycreamcheesebraid

Thank you Shiao-Ping for sharing your wonderful skills as both a baker and a true artist!  Also thanks to MC for sharing with the "inspiring" story from Vermont.  After reading the blogs from Shiao-Ping and Farine I decided why not try???  Maybe the flavor will be what I am seeking. 

Last three weeks I baked really bad bread and I know why: the flour.
Nelle ultime tre settimane ho sfornato del pane veramente brutto e so perché: la farina.

Last week I baked Hamelman's Semolina with whole-grain soaker, using a natural leaven rather than fresh yeast, and was delighted with the results.

Hi,

I have moved this over from a discussion on Shiao-Ping's blog  to my Blog, as I was getting lost in some of the detail being covered, and because Shiao-Ping had asked me for more detailed discussion of sour doughs within My Blog page; so, here goes:

I am detailing below the feeding regimes we used to make thousands of Pain de Campagne and Rossisky loaves everyday in the bakery where I worked from 1994 to 2003.

Feeding regimes:   Commercially one feed works fine

Hi All,

I tried again with the baguettes.  This time I used 1.25 cups of flour and .5 cup of water, 1/4 teaspoon of active dry yeast (i bought the glass jar in spite of some of ya'll's advice so i'll be using it for a while.) and 1/4 teaspoon of salt (i should've used more salt)...

So, does it count as an autolyzing if I've already added the yeast and the salt? Since i've got the active dry stuff i have to soak it first and since i'm using so little water i don't have enough to divide it.

Will slick Method 100% naturally leavened, white  Maltese bread.

Flour 100% ( Including flour from starter )

Starter 33% ( 100% hydration )

Water 67% ( Including water from starter)

Salt 1.6%

Sugar 2.5%

Butter 2.5%

Milk 1 TBS @ 600G total flour