Blog posts

A delightful little boule.

I love hummus and thought it was time to try my hand at pita.  Using the recipe from serious eats, I met with great success.  The formula called for more yeast than I like. I set the oven at a higher temperature (baked at 550 though I did not check the thermometer, I just baked shortly after it came up to temperature.

The pitas were very soft.  Made six of them. Ate two fresh out of the oven. Just cut them up and dipped them in homemade hummus.  It was a real treat.

Plus one little batard...

Used my own levain on these.  3x300g, 1x550g.

alan

    This is similar to a bake I did a little while ago but I changed things up a little.  I used a much higher % of freshly milled whole wheat flour and a little less whole rye.  I also used some pecan meal and cracked wheat and eliminated the onions.

I am not sure how much the pecan flavor really comes through but you can definitely taste some nuttiness for sure and it gave the crumb an interesting purple haze color similar to when adding walnuts.

Lately I've been making fairly simple breads and so got the urge to get a little more complex. While doing the weekly shopping both dates and sunflower seed caught my eye and there was a lady demonstrating some locally made maple syrup, unusual for Iowa, which of course I had to try.

2 years with a Nutramill.

I’m 74 and grew up eating toast for breakfast.    As I have aged it seems what passes for bread does not agree with me.    Specifically there were too any trips to the bathroom at night and i blamed these on too much folic acid.  

After the craziness of the festive season, it's good to get back into the bread baking saddle. Not that I was entirely out of the kitchen as the holidays are a wonderful time to cook great food. And it was a leftover from that cooking that provided the inspiration - a head and a half of roasted garlic...

Now, I adore garlic, so yes, I decided to make a loaf of bread with that much garlic in it... Not that the neighbours will be thanking me, I'm sure... I kept the bake simple in order to showcase the garlic.

Poolish:

100g bread flour

100g water

I baked my Rye sourdough in the iron pots the other day for the first time. I've been using Ken Forkish's method of forming the boules, proofing them seam-side down then baking them seam-side up, letting them bloom naturally. However, when I did this batch I mistakenly put on in the pot smooth-side up. The difference is amazing! No bloom on the mistaken one, though it did split a bit on one side. The others all rose higher and are much more attractive.

Here is the same bread baked on stones, with regular scoring before baking:

I've been baking weekly and making progress with the occasional step backward. Today's bake is a wheat levain with sunflower and pumpkin seeds. I'm finally getting better at shaping my batards, this is dramatically better spring than in the past.

I've noticed something curious: I've usually made boules, two at a time, one baked in a combo cooker, the other in a Le Creuset enameled casserole of the same diameter. The one in the Le Creuset always has noticeably better spring. I've done this often enough that I'm pretty sure it's not my imagination . Has anyone else come across this?