Blog posts

This morning, I baked two loaves of Pane Tipo di Altamura (1kg each) and one loaf of my Pugliese Capriccioso (1 kg) in my friend J.S.'s Wood-Fired Oven. The breads were baked for a potluck lunch for about 25 most of whom are Italian-Americans.

Both breads were cold retarded in bannetons after final shaping for about 18 hours.

OK, I just realized I am bread blogging on a Friday night... but I felt compelled to share these pics. Hopefully, someone else out there on a Friday night is at least entertained. (Please excuse the photo orientation, I really cannot figure it out to save my life)

I was lucky enough to get out of town and go visit my daughter in Houston for 3 days this week.  I also got to seem my brother and SIL who lives there too.  We had a great dinner on Tuesday night down in Rice Village at a nice Italian restaurant that served good Italian bread – not SD but still good with olive oil on it.  The Mud Bug Ravioli with a good fruity Zin was very nice too.   We don’t get together enough….

First time out of the starting gate baking with figs - calmyrna figs.  As a child, figs were about as close to repulsive to my nascent taste buds and sensibilities as eating bugs.  My, how a half dozen decades have changed that.

Still practicing those double scores across the batards.  And one little baguette, because, well, you know...  It's a tough job, but someone has to do it.

This is by no means complete - 

just a number of videos I frequently refer to

Kneading

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAvlONuJXP0

King Arthur Baguette making

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=masipMhrV5c&list=PLE2D447C3F9AAD68F

Russian Braid - Ciril Hitz

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqGwQXFjHgg

I stumbled across Paul Hollywood's "City Bakes" series on TV the other week whilst channel hopping and saw him visit this New York bakery where the proprietor was famous for no-knead bread. It's been intriguing me ever since, so I thought I'd give it a whirl - at most I'd wasted half a kilo of flour and a little bit of time...

The program didn't say much about the ingredients beyond the fact that he used half a gram of instant yeast and let the dough sit in a cool place for 24 hours, but I figured what the heck, I could play around and see where it took me.

Baking with sourdough can be daunting and it takes some effort to get into. You can make wonderful loaves with advanced techniques involving thermometers, special temperature controlled boxes, handling the dough properly etc. I want to dedicate this entry to easy sourdough baking.

I like seeds in bread and Chad Robertson's Seeded Bread really intrigued me with the quantity and the variety of seeds in this particular bread. I have long given up on using Robertson's flour quantities and methods but I do use his creations for inspiration. The methods are right out of FWSY for the most part.

calls for2 cups water and 1/2 C powdered skim milk,can I just use 2 C skim milk?

Finally, repaired my bread baking and moving to cookies. Looking for a relative low fat/cal cookie recipe tried an old Frank Ford recipe for oatmeal sweet bread using flaked oats, just a bit to crunchy.

Moved to a Good Housekeeping recipe that follows - the problem is the cookies(drop) stick to an oil cookie sheet. Tho crunchy and tasty used a butcher knife to slide under the cookies and end up with more broken pieces than whole cookies. My dough may not be thick enough as oil is substituted for margarine.

Recipe circa 1963

Semisweet oatmeal cookies