Blog posts

   This bread was inspired by my friend and fellow TFL member, Khalid.  His beautiful bread was a 100% whole wheat version using yeast while for my version I chose to convert the recipe to sourdough and used three different whole grain flours instead of one.

I decided to use my trusty Krups coffee grinder to make fresh ground flour for the entire recipe and I was quite happy with the results.

I used a 2 step build for the starter mixing Einkorn Ancient Whole Wheat with a Hard White Whole Wheat.

Following the month of Ramadan, where bread consumption was slow paced,  it was finally Eid celebration this past weekend here in Dubai. With not much time to be around the kitchen, i managed to squeeze a swift afternoon bake from the book: Bread by jeffery Hamelman.

There's quite a few good tutorials on this on TFL, but tons of lousy ones online, but I thought I would add my own. Mine is a bit different than others in that it focuses on maintaining warm temps throughout the starter creation process. I believe this is key to establishing good yeast and bacterial multiplication and a healthy starter ecosystem. It also focuses on just using flour, water, time and temperature to build a starter. No sugar, potatoes, honey, (heaven forbid) commercial yeast, other fancy stuff.

In my other post I showed the lasagna that I made from sourdough pasta. My husband is the pasta maker and I turn it into dinner...so it is a joint effort. It makes the most remarkably tender and flavorful pasta. I use what ever white starter I have  . Mine is usually at 100% hydration. One very nice thing about the SD pasta is its keeping quality in the fridge after you let it dry on the counter. It will last easily for a week if you wrap it well. We make extra and then dry on the counter on cloth towels and then store in fridge to be eaten with various toppings.

I like pizza quite a lot, but my wife loves it. She told me last night that Pizza is the one food she can “over-eat.” I could not start to list the foods I will predictably over-eat given the opportunity, but my wife has this super-human self-control. So this confession tells you that pizza is really special to her.

I've made some pretty good pizze and some not so good. Last night I made the best pizza I've ever made by a long shot. In fact, I do believe it was the best pizza crust I've ever eaten.

Hello everyone,

It’s been a summer of so much sun here in the Pacific Northwest – have tried to capture the season with some pictures –  flowers, light and beautiful sunshine.

the center of this flower seemed like the sun's rays...

So last week the cool guy who trades me goat cheese requested the sesame levain I made on week three.  I was hesitant as I didn't intend to go back and replicate or improve any recipes but I reconsidered quickly and thought it would be nice to fulfill a request.  I had to make a few changes though.  I cut the lemon idea entirely as I dont' want to find out how much zest I'd need to actually taste it and the loaf was so good when I couldn't taste it.  Secondly I doubled the levain and reduced the final dough ingredients to keep the formula the same.

Maybe this should be called Hamelman's Pain au Levain, mostly, because there were a couple of small excursions from the formula presented in Hamelman's Bread, 2nd Edition. 

baked this yesterday... yes, it is for my friends. this time they dropped by my place when i was baking. they were delivering an early birthday cake for me!! 

and i treated them a freshly baked bread from the oven!

home baked blueberry cheesecake :) what a surprised!

I used a small amount of organic rye flour, perhaps 10% in my white bread flour starter and that seemed to kick things up a bit.I have reduced the proofing time to 40 minutes on the batard and while a little easier to score, my lame work still needs work.  Next bake I will try a 35 minute proof for the batard/ baguette.