Blog posts

I made the Pain Au Levain 'sourdough' pg. 158 from the book 'Jeffery Hamelman Bread'.

What a lovely delicious bread that has been enjoyed by many who have baked it.

When preparing my wfo for this bake, timing was very important because, I also make dinner in it before doing my baking.  

I call our dinner on Mike's work days 'time orders'.  

When he arrives home from a cycling exercise ride.  He has just enough time for showering and eating before, leaving the house.

So dinner is on table usually about 4:15.

I just returned yesterday from my first visit to Haiti as one of a group of 16 graduate students in public health, forestry and environmental studies, and nursing. Our route took us from Port au Prince, the capitol city devastated by a magnitude 7.0 earthquake in January 2010, through the Artibonite Valley, the epicenter of the subsequent cholera outbreak, and finally to the city of Hinche in the Central Plateau, the site of a suspected sewage dump that set off an epidemic that has killed thousands.

I hope you'll forgive me for making an off topic post, but my last post didn't do justice to how pretty it is Poland right now.  I wanted to do a quick post to share pictures of a few of the sites here.  

Warszawa:

Made this for the first time having read txfarmer's extensive post on this bread. It certainly does live up to its reputation of being the softest sandwich loaf ever. The extensive dough kneading required produced a dough so silky smooth that I couldn't help myself but to have a taste of the raw dough. And disturbingly I wanted more of it. Hmm..

Good enough to be eaten as a snack.

Kong

I love the crustiness I get with the Jim Lahey style bread. But if I store in in a plastic bag, it crust goes all soft. How can I keep it out on the counter for 3-5 days? Someone suggested keeping it in a paper bag. Anyone ever had luck with that?

By the way, I'm new to The Fresh Loaf but not new to bread baking. Started 40 years ago with the Tassajara method. Am now quickly become a Laher and Reinhart devotee (but I kind of miss the therapy of all that kneading).

Just thought with all my experimenting I would make a basic Sourdough loaf just so I would not forget what brought me down this road.

Enjoy the coming spring everyone!

Cheers,

Wingnut

After the our take on Ballymaloe’s Brown Bread with Guinness and Biga, turned out so nice for St. Paddy’s Day, we wondered why we haven’t ever seen this bread baked as a sourdough at Ballymaloe?  So we thought we would give it a go with Not Mini's Ancient WW SD Starter that is almost 2 weeks old and nearly tripling after 8 hours now.

This one is inspired by TFL posts, specifically ones by Yuko & Evon Lim, of breads made with red wine.

My raisin yeast water was ready and raring to go. Till now I have always added a bit of instant yeast to my YW breads for luck. This time I decided to take risk and see if the YW could manage on its own. As this was to be a test for my YW,  I decided to stick to few simple ingredients. First I soaked 100 gms chopped dried figs in 100 gms Shiraz and kept overnight.

     As I mentioned in my previous post I recently purchased a Brod and Taylor proofer and I have been experimenting with it to see how it affects the sourness and overall bread.