Hello everybody! There are a lot of wonderful breads here lately. I was gone in vacation, and since I got back I keep reading every post that I missed. I feel so inspired everytime I open this site and I read your stories. My "breads-I-must-try" list is already too long and it keeps getting longer.
I haven’t posted in over a year. To busy baking and doing the necessary every day life things until May and my arm had a bit of an old man’s problem requiring surgery in August (broken bone spur with complications). All is better now and really I needed to bake some sourdough bread. I used Susan’s Simple Sourdough Formula, here http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/13771/simple-sourdough-909. I have baked this bread before, but today I had to make a couple of changes.
We don't see a lot of posts on sandwiches on this forum, which I'm sure is what most of use our daily bread for. I thought it'd be fun to do something a little different by including a procedure on the meat that went into this particular favourite sandwich of mine.
I finally got a new pasta maker to replace the one I destroyed via water and overestimating my ability to remember how to reassemble it. :) This time, I went with a motor! I stuck with an Atlas 150, which was a great machine for me until I went all Mr. Fixit on it.
Previously, I'd been using store-bought flour. Last night was my first try with it using flour I milled myself, though I hedged my bets on this one with around 33% King Arthur Bread Flour. I didn't find a lot on milling pasta flour using the search, so hopefully my experiments will aid searchers somewhere down the line.
I am really new to grinding my own grain at home. I purchased the Family Grain Mill and at this point have not successfully ground any grain. I am using a good quality organic spelt and soft white wheat berry grain. I have tried baking several different things...tortillas, artisan bread, and crackers. At this point I cannot get the grain fine enough. Everything is turning out tough and chewy.
I am living in Kyoto this year (from August 2011 until July 2012) and we have such a tiny kitchen and no oven. I really miss baking bread. I had to give my starter to a friend to hopefully keep alive for me.
Most of the bread here is pretty bad; white sandwich bread, but there are a lot of small bakeries that make french loaves, and we treat ourselves to them from time to time. And, of course, they have sweets too :)
