Blog posts

Pain de Campagne

Toast

Recipe is from the book Brilliant Bread by James Morton. Really nice country bread with crusty crust and beautiful soft crumb. I have used rye starter and a pinch of fresh yeast, overnight bulk fermentation and baked in the cassrole. Satisfying result with funny pattern on the top.

Have a nice day!

Plans to start a bakery; what next?

Profile picture for user Mebake

Hi, fellow and dear TFL'ers

The thoughts and plans of starting a bakery in Dubai have been broiling in my mind for over a year now. As many of you already know, I began taking pastry classes some few months back as I believe that knowing how to make bread alone just won’t cut it. So, I took the classes and collected my certificate and now I think that the natural choice here is to seek an internship / apprenticeship in some bakery.

Chocolate Sourdough with Dried Cherries

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My husband and his friends were having a peach sour beer tasting party and he asked me to bake something that could pair well with those beers. I considered baking something peachy, but peach season is not quite in full swing yet, so the ones available at the farmers' markets are still a bit too pricey and not quite at their best.

Pain Au Bacon with 45% Whole Grain

Toast
36 Hour Method
Main recipe
WeightIngredientBaker's %
350.00Wheat flour, white (industrial), 13% protein, bleached, enriched35.00%
200.00Wheat flour, white (industrial), 10% protein, bleached, unenriched20.00%
300.00Wheat flour, whole-grain30.00%
150.00Buckwheat flour, whole-groat15.00%
820.00Water, tap, drinking

Natural Leaven Vienna Bread

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Sometimes you just want a loaf of pan bread.

I have been working for a while to nail down a loaf of relatively lean sandwich pan bread, moving through formulas in many a baking book, converting them to sourdough and scaling them for my 4"x8" loaf pan.  I ended up settling on a highly-tweaked formula based on Peter Reinhart's Vienna Bread from BBA. Recipe is scaled for a 4 inch by 8 inch metal loaf pan.  A young levian is used for this bread, a mere 4-6 hours after the preferment has been mixed.

Natural Leaven Vienna Bread:

Migrating to whole grains - Tartine Whole Wheat

Profile picture for user David Esq.

My Tartine loaves made with 70% home-milled flour came out excellent.  I have one in the freezer to bring to the in-laws next weekend, and brought one to my parents for dinner last night.  My dad re-heated it in the toaster oven and it was a little difficult to cut -- the bread tore a bit and I don't know if that was the knife's fault (a very sharp "bow" knife) or if the crumb was just too soft.  I don't think it would have worked for a sandwich bread, but maybe once it cools off it will be easier to slice.

36 hour Rye Pain au levain

Profile picture for user Mebake

I've finally jumped into the 36 hour sourdough bandwagon. I had some ripe Rye sour on hand, as I created a preferment out of a starter for no certain recipe  (Happens to me often), and decided to give the 36 hour sourdough a trial. With all the rave on TFL, I knew that the method will yield excellent bread.

The Recipe:

lessons learned

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For the past year this site and my sister Varda, whom many of you know here as an experienced baker, have been teaching me to bake bread.  Varda lives 3000 miles away so the teaching has, obviously, not been hands-on.  But learning to bake bread, as I have learned, can only be hands-on.   The photo associated with my profile is my first and very sorry attempt at baking.  Varda said " baguettes are not for beginners".  Did I listen?  No.