Blog posts

Yesterday I had a big bunch of starter and two baking plans. One was an artisan loaf, which totally failed, it didn't hold its shape at all, I ended up with a 10 in round disk that had such a crust you could hardly cut it. Today it is bird food out in the back yard.

The second project was the cinnamon rolls, flavored with orange zest, sprinkled with cranberries and walnuts in addition to my regular cinnamon roll fare, frosted with a cream cheese orange glaze, and it's delicious.

Tailrunner's recent post 

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/35029/40-rye-60-spelt-ryw-and-whey

brought my attention back to a bread I posted about here

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/28855/spelt-beach

and which I hadn't made for a while.

This made myfingers itch, and I made a 1000g loaf using spelt biga with a tiny amount instant dry yeast, instead of adding the yeast to the final mix.

I attempted txfarmers tried and true baguette recipe.  I am way above my scope.  However, bread is a spiritual process that truly stretches you to develop your skills both literally and figuratively.

 A three hour recipe began at 1pm took me till 7:40pm.  The recipe was fine.  I realize that for me I read a recipe very literally like walking 1 step at a time In baby steps. This wet dough is a  challenge for my amateur skill set.  Perseverance is my motto in the process of creating A baguette.  

Some Lazy Man's Brioche I made this week.  Quite tasty.

As the weather is getting colder, I am getting more and more into autumn spices - cinnamon and ginger, and what could be better than a warm spicy apple pie on a cold autumn day with a nice cuppa

A full recipe here

Bread, the world over, takes many forms. And in the American Southwest this is one of my favorites, the sopapilla.

Now, technically, I understand that this is not a loaf of bread. But psychologically, this perfectly fits the crispy, flaky crust while still being "light". it's a giant air bubble covered with light, flaky crust. You can sprinkle it with sugar, or drizzle it with honey, you can open a corner and fill it with whatever your heart desires, you can sop up your favorite soup or stew, so for me anyway, it's close enough to bread to BE bread.

Although this past Saturday morning was wet and dreary outside, things were lively inside the Culinary Center of Kansas City.  Twenty students showed up to try their hand at a Swedish-style bread and practice several shaping techniques.  

I was reading online this week about baking bread in slow cookers (more here and here), so I decided to make a 3.2 kg (~7 lbs) batch of my house loaf - here's the formula ....

.... and bake three 800 gram (~28 ounce) boules in the oven, and one in our trusty old slow cooker/crock pot.