Blog posts

Last week, I went to a health food store in Dubai to pick up some Rye berries, and black strap molasses. To my dismay, I could not find any malt syrup in the store, and left to a shopping mall for lunch. Located next to the food court was yet another health store that quickly caught my sight. I went in, and asked for barley malt syrup, and the salesperson said that they do not sell it anymore. I was just on my way out  when I  heard him calling upon me and saying: Wait, I have some barley extract!

Hello Everyone, 

I baked brioches today using Tartine's recipe but used half the ingredients. This is what I ended up with. The final result tasted good, but the holes were small.

Please let me know what went wrong here.

Thank you.

After last year’s total and complete fiasco using origami panettone moulds made out of parchment paper where the panettone fell out of the mould onto the floor while cooling upside down, we decided to bake it in a large soufflé pan this year.

We used Susan’s Wild Yeast formula found here: http://www.wildyeastblog.com/2007/12/07/panettone/ 

The lead in photo is Barb's first ever homemade tamales... She and Helen both made tamales for the first time... and they both made pork... She did a marvelous job meandering outside of her comfort zone.

Helen made her's with her daughters and granddaughter, thus starting a new family tradition... They made about 90 or so of these ...

 Nice looking tamales here too... fun times!!

Recently, I'm reading Chad Robertson's Tartine Bread before sleep. His concept and method in bread baking are unique. I tried the Tartine Country loaf before reading his book, while I decide to try it again sticking to his procedure. 

Here's the recipe(I can't get good whole wheat flour here, so I replace it with whole rye flour).

1.Make the leaven. I fed my starter(4g) with 25g bread flour, 25g whole rye flour, 50g water. At 26C, it takes about five hours to pass the floating test.

As the weather has turned cooler, my sourdough breads have become less tasty. They have  had a less complex flavor and have been less tangy than those baked last Summer. My kitchen is in the mid-60's of late, while it was in the high-70's (or low-80's)  in the heat of summer. So, in the interest of science and other noble causes, I set out to return my SFSD to its rightful tastiness.

I have recently become somewhat interested in making sourdough at home (OK, maybe slightly more than interested...). I've always loved bread but never made it seriously until recently. Last year I enrolled in Stratford Chefs School where I got my hands doughy again in pastry class, and I'm now in second year. I've made a few different kinds of breads (Baguettes, Sours, Sourdough Ryes, Pain Rustique, Potato bread, so on) but have not had any real repetitional experience, often just make the bread once or twice.  

So I was making some bread for the holidays and I decided to try using scissors to make my cuts since I had little success using a knife. I am still contemplating buying a razor.  But this is what I got with my shears...nothing fancy. The top left was basically an octagon or circle cut. He top right was intended to be a square and the bottom was a simple snip in the center and a second perpendicular snip in the middle.