Blog posts

My wife got me the Kettle Pizza cooker for my BD (discussed in this thread here). This is the 18.5" model, MSRP $129.95. This is my first try. Not bad, but need to tweak techniques: the timing - how long to heat the stone for ideal crust; how to spin it around; when to yank parchment paper; ideal temp to start cooking, etc. The trick is to balance cooking the crust with the top. I missed it by that much on this go-round. 

I was reading someone elses post the other day and they commented that they were using a smoked flour for their next bake.  I love just about anything smoked...ribs, brisket, chicken...you name it as far as I'm concerned it tastes better after smoking with some wood.  Unfortunately the flour in question is only available in England and Amazon UK will not ship to the USA, so I figured the n

A sequel to my previous WFO bake of my Greek Pide.  This time it was baked in my electric oven 'EO' just because...I had nothing better to do and wanted to use the dough I had frozen from last weeks previous bake and I was curious to see how the GP would turn out versus the heat of the WFO.  Well, the results were pleasing.  Flavor wise...well very pleasing from the EO..excellent from the WFO.  No doubt there are certain types of breads that benefit from the smokey hot flames, coals and intense heat of a WFO.

With the freezer full of half loaves of recent bread bakes we had time to do some other cooking and grilling.  We ran across these great apricots.  Never seen anything like them - just beautiful color - inside and out.  Almost too good to eat!

So some apricot, nectarine and ginger jam was soon to follow.

Here's Jean-Louis Palladin's brioche, converted to metric (and BBGA format).

FORMULA.

PROCESS.

Make a soaker with whole wheat flour and spelt berries. Let it sit at room temp, covered. A day later, mix yeast with warm water and honey. After 5 minutes, add the foaming yeast to the soaker, along with some salt and enough whole wheat flour to make a sticky dough. Knead for 5 minutes, form a ball and transfer to a bowl coated with good EVOO. Let rise until doubled.

This is a bit unusual. I saw smoked flour on the shelf of Waitrose in Kensington so had togive it a go. The flour is from Bacheldre watermill in Wales and is described as organic smoked stoneground malted blend flour. Their website says that malted wheat flakes are cold smoked over oak chippings for 18 hours in the smokehouse then mixed with organic stoneground malted blend flour. There's a gentle smoky aroma from the dry flour which becomes more assertive when it's wet.

I'm trying to make sourdough bread with Tartine's method, and I can't seem to get past the "make your leaven float" part. I've been maintaing a liquid starter for a month now, and a dry starter for a week, and I just can't even produce a leaven that will float, so I haven't even bothered to warm the oven yet. So lots of flour and water going into the recycling bin, lots of time spent trying to keep my  various colonies happy, and nary a loaf to even dislike. It's worse than bad bread. It's no bread. WTF do I do? I'm feeling exasperated.