Blog posts

Still working on the nuances of oven temperature. It’s really a comedy of timing between two ancient processes—bread making and fire building. It seem like if I get it over 600 degrees at the start, it takes a good 45 minutes to reach a more comfortable 550 for bread baking, but then it holds the temps nicely for hours. Handy if you have multiple batches, less handy if you were hoping to cook your dinner at 350 degrees anytime soon. I do crack the door to bring the temp down a bit quicker.

Common occurrences when firing your mud oven:

This is a concocted loaf of whole wheat with fresh basil from the garden, chopped green olives, and leavened with San Francisco Sourdough starter from Sourdoughs International

King Arthur Traditional Whole Wheat Flour

Amish Cornmeal

Quinoa Flour

Oat Flour

Ground Flax seed

Hemp seed

Org. Barley Malt

Org. Canola Oil

I've never tried doing a blog before, but just had to share last weekend's ragingly successful experiment. Sourdough has been going not-so-well lately, so I've returned to commercial yeast for a bit. This is a somewhat altered version of my mother-in-law's recipe.

Orange Sticky Rolls

Sweet Dough:

1 Cup lukewarm milk (for non-dairy, I use 1/3 c each of coconut, soy, and rice milks)

3 Tbsp honey

1 tsp salt

1 tsp instant yeast

The Jewish members of my family and friends, have been fasting for the last (almost) 24 hours, as is traditional for Yom Kippur. I have been making their life difficult by baking and making the house smell very tempting. The good thing is that those "fasters" will be allowed to enjoy the results in a couple of hours.Break-fast bake I

Here is what got me into The Fresh Loaf, dealing with this and a similar oven.

Today it was time for my first try at Essential's Columbia from Maggie Glezer's "Artisan Baking".

Essential's Columbia

I just posted the Semolina Sandwich Loaf ( http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/4213/semolina-sandwich-loaf ) and wanted to share my experience making this sourdough version of Maggie Glezer’s.

This was really a nice little loaf with a great crust and also a very moist and beautiful crumb. It surprised me with the nice oven spring it had for such a seemingly small loaf.

I’ve been so curious about semolina flour.I didn’t understand much about it and there doesn’t seem to be a lot of information regarding it.After reading as much as I could find in various bread books I decided I had to take a stab at it.So last weekend I baked this yeasted sandwich version along with another sourdough version. (I will post that one separately.)