Blog posts

I've loved the feel of the Hamelman Pain au Levain dough during every phase of the prep.  French Folds, Letter Folds, shaping, couching, scoring.  And, of course, seeing what comes out of the oven as bread.

And so it was time for another indecisive bake.  Batards or baguettes.  Hmm, why not both.  Again, I've not seen this bread done as baguettes anywhere on this site before, so maybe I can start a movement.

After accidentally stretch-and-folding a loaf into near soup, I asked here if it was possible I had overkneaded.  Instead a new term entered my vocabulary: thiols!  However, I've found it near impossible to find out much more about these mysterious and oft-titled "pesky" by-products of unwelcome bacteria.  Google yields very little, and what I can deduce from TFL is incomplete and added to with other mysterious terms I don't understand yet.

Oh my! I had to share this recipe!

As a single ski bum, I have been feeding daily on cream cheese, fruit braid and pulla for nearly three weeks now. I have also discovered parts of long ago baked breads in the depths of my freezer. Some still excellent and a couple over time. Time to start baking loaves again and time to feed my starter.

I have baked these cookies a couple of times with great results and this time decided to spike things with a little chipotle powder and some almond. This recipe just called out for some nuts!

Here is the mix:

   My good bread baking friend DA and his furry apprentice Lucy have been baking up a storm lately.  Mookie thought it was high time I get my act together and see if I can come close to packing in as many ingredients in a bread as they do.  I am not sure if this one fits the bill, but it sure did come out chock full of flavor.

I used some sunflower seeds in the porridge mixture for some added crunch and flavor and the addition of the mushroom with sage olive oil really created a healthy and fall feeling bread.

Hello, I've been gone for a while from TFL, but never turned my back on baking. Hope to post some more again :)

Here are some multigrain rolls from last week's dinner

decided to have another go at Reinhart's Oat Bran Broom bread. Recipe as follows (I changed a couple of things as I wanted to lighten the loaf a little)

Soaker (as per recipe)
184 g whole wheat flour
16.7 g oat bran
14 g flax seed
4 g salt
198 g water
Mixed and left on bench overnight.

The road to this one lead via juicy pancake plains.

A few months ago, I realised that I'm barely using the gram flour I have (which should be mostly chickpeas), mostly because the legumes most likely haven't been soaked and had a much stronger, somewhat bitter taste. At the time, I was experimenting with various flours for pancakes, as well as fillings. I was also playing around with leavened pancake dough.

Sweet bread is a bit of a staple in Latin America and Mexico.  Its something that I make very rarely, these sugar-shell topped conchas are really delicious, i made Orange and chocolate versions instead of traditional white or Matcha tea flavoured Conchas.

http://mybreadandbrot.com/orange-chocolate-mexican-conchas/

I have been homebaking breads and pizza doughs for a few years but I'm stuck.  It seems that the ingredients available to the "home baker" are much more limited than for commercial places (well--we sure buy less quantity).

Always up for a challenge (except when I’m not) I recently came across TxFarmer’s fantastic Laminated Sandwich Loaf blog entry from Dec. 2011.  As I am now a new inductee into the Lamination Game via my two recent forays into croissant making, I though that I’d give this a whirl as well.  I'm also a sucker for trying other things that she's displayed on TFL.