Blog posts

Hoptik is a portmanteau of hopia, a Chinese pastry (see here) and tikoy, the Chinese version of mochi. It is essentially a flaky pastry filled with bean paste with mochi in the center that's why they're sometimes called mochipia. I first had this in a Chinese restaurant and we all liked it so I made my own yesterday. The crust is different from my first hopia post because I opted for a more traditional one with a higher fat content.

Rye and Barley sourdough with 100g Rice flour. It gave me a better rise than I expected.

Got home to this beautiful sunset. Well, who wants to be inside cooking? Ploughman's dinner on the balcony, of course.

Hey Everybody,
I haven't been very active here lately, but thought the Freshloafians might appreciate a recent article that was written about me and my mobile bakery in Bread Magazine.  Click on the photo below to see the article.

Photos are by: Tim Goessman, Stephanie, and yours truly ;)

Enjoy.

-Mark

Sometimes, I think, it's best to start telling a story by jumping to the end. Especially when that story is still alive and unfolding.

It's Sunday morning and the bakery is open once again. On the sunlit shelves lie gently whispering baguettes,  butter laden pastries and warm, plain loaves.  Sunday bread.  Bread to make you feel good inside and sprinkle a touch of nostalgia over your long, lazy breakfast.

Through the open door to the street outside waft the irrestible scents of the ovens offering.

People fall in haphazardly. 

Here were my weekend bakes. I took these to a picnic—one loaf sliced up, the other given to the host. I'm incredibly pleased with the way these came out. Everything from the crumb to the crust to the color was ace in my book.

One of the great things about this site is the volume of great recipes to try. One of my favourites is Norm's onion buns:

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/6245/another-one-norm-onion-rolls

My two key changes were using a liquid levain and upping the hydration to about 68% The dough hydration as written would be not workable at my elevation and I hand mix all my breads, so no big mixer to help.

  I've been meaning to make a version of Dave Snyder's famous San Joaquin bread.  I baked some baguettes last week using the modified formula below but without the onions and they tasted great.  For this bake I decided to add some grilled onions and shape some batards.

I used KAF French style flour in place of the AP flour in the original formula and increased the amount of rye and whole wheat also using fresh milled rye and fresh milled sprouted whole wheat.  I added some fresh milled Durum flour as well.

Next up was making baguettes based on Ken's Artisan Bakery's Country Brown batards and boules.  The other day I did the same to his bakery's Country Blonde.  Not much to add except that I'm in the midst of a tear for getting batard and boule formats squeezed into baguettes.  Must be an affliction, Doc.

This week I was going to try to explain Lucy’s plan to save all of us from the Sun going naturally smoking hot  in 500,000 years and toasting us into wishing we were pop tarts instead of lazy.  But, things happen, and we are off on another totally different track.  Let’s face it 500,000 years is a ways off so we can concentrate on something else a little more pressing.... like human caused, global warming – even if it is totally fake or not.

hi the freshloafers,

I make this marbled rye bread purely for its aesthetic value.  Its made with a dark and light whole rye/ wheat mixed dough.  A great little bread to serve for brunch.  It does also taste very nice!  for details, photos and instructions to get that great swirl effect follow me back to mybreadandbrot.

http://mybreadandbrot.com/marbled-rye-bread/