Blog posts

Hello fellow bakers! 

Ive been a fan on The Fresh Loaf for quite some time, and finally have decided to start posting some stuff!

I have been working in restaurants the last 2 1/2 years, the last year in pastry/bakeries. I currently work at a small startup bakery in San Francisco. Currently one of the things we are working on is croissants. 

Ive started with the Pierre Herme base recipe and have been playing around with it.

I just came across some videos explaining bakers math and making baguettes.

http://www.stellaculinary.com/podcasts/video/how-to-make-a-basic-baguette-video-recipe

It's been a while since I mixed up my standard white bread flour formula. I decided to march to a different tune a few days ago and try something a bit different.

I started collecting things from the pantry and this is what I arrived at:

The formula:

Warning: I have not baked this bread!  Now that that's out of the way...

I have a 1948 edition of the Culinary Arts Institute Encyclopedic Cookbook, edited by Ruth Berolzheimer.  It had belonged to my mother; a wedding gift, I believe.  

I was in a creative mood the other day and after my wife fried up some bacon I felt inspired to use the leftovers in a bread.  You know what they say....."bacon makes everything taste better".  It's hard to argue with this logic, so I decided to combine the bacon with some cheddar cheese, toasted onions and added some wheat germ I just bought from King Arthur Flour to add some nuttiness to the overall flavor profile.  I boiled some potatoes an

We are invited tonight to a Burns Night supper - long-running, we've been going for years!  I thought this time I should try to take some bread (though I wasn't confident enough to stop them buying bread - must be more confident!)

Prepared dough for a Spelt, Wheatgerm &Oat Loaf last night at about 7pm. Now Saturday 28 Jan 10am.

Flour mix is 500gms white spelt / 100gms wheatgerm / 100gms pinhead oats / 300 gms dark rye

Put three loaves into our very cold conservatory overnight and this morning the dough looks like this :

Is this cracking more common in certain types of bread ? and does it effect the baking time as the loaf "opens" in the oven. Any comments welcome

I like the look when baked

So here is my take on the classic Cheese bread.  I love the flavor and aroma of melted/toasted gruyere cheese. I wanted this flavor to infuse my basic sourdough loaf without getting muddled in the process.  I have seen several different types of this bread but all of them simply mix the cheese (either cubed or grated) in the dough during the mixing/kneading stage.  I wanted something more "in your face" gruyere, melted/toasted cheese flavor in every slice while, at the same time, achieving a very rustic-looking country bread.  

I've made croissants before now, twice: once during a King Arthur baking class, and, shortly after, at home, a bit more than two years ago.  I was nominally satisfied with both attempts, but in that same time frame my focus was elsewhere: sourdough and baguettes. With due humility I've been satisfied with my consistent successes with both baguettes, and a handful of sourdough formulae that I've felt the urge to try a new challenge: croissants--high on my "enjoy eating" list.