Blog posts

We have 2 Costco conveniently located in different sites of the city I live in. We also have many of the others but Costco is always my best choice for grossary. I bought this cooking book at Costco 4 years ago and have been practicing the recipes it offers. And as it says I found it incredibly easy to follow. Rustic Tuscany Bread from the cooking book has been the most facinating piece to me. I did it quite often and I did it kind of my own special version. It looks gorgeous and tastes fantastic.

 Pissaladiere is a sort of pizza's distant cousin, originated in Province, Southern France, said to have been brought to the region by Romans.  Not sure if the Romans had a pizzaria back home in those days :p, but it was probably their flat hearth breads Romans used to make that gave the inspirations to the locals.....though I have read one or two articles by patriatic French who claimed it's their pissaladiere that gave the inspiration to the Romans for making pizza. :D

It's been really few years I didn't show up here. Busy but never stopped baking. Focaccia is one of the breads I've baked almost every 2~3 days in the last 3 weeks. It's simple and goes well with about every thing I put on my dinning table and, most of all,  my family and my friends love  it. The dough I use for focaccia is pretty much similar to regular pizza dough. I actually us it for pizza as well.

After a long time being intrigued by artisan bread baking, I finally decided to give it a go.  I think I got it from my father, but I usually dive in head first and think "go big or go home."  

I purchased excessive quantity of malted coarsely-chopped wheat grains in brewery supplier’s shop.

After milling this grain in flour it was not clear how one can use these quantities (1 kg) since we add only 1% of diastatic malt to dough.

After searching and thinking I created a recipe by myself, receiving golden, crispy and very healthy crackers. It’s wonderful to eat with home-made cheese, cream cheese, salty dip or jam.

Ingredients:

What to do with your starter excess?  I always feel bad just pouring it down the drain.  However sometimes I have to pour out the full cup of each starter to make room for the cup of new feeding that has to get added in.  Even when I do use the pour off for sourdough pancakes, there is often a good 0.5-1 cup of excess re-fed starter in the proofing bowls.  In either case, I hate to pour good starter down the drain.  If I follow the recipes in books like Tartine they really are only using a very small fraction of the total starter, albeit for great recipes.  I w

I've read this website and blog for years.  Over those years I've tried lots of different breads from lots of books.  I haven't made a truly serious study of it.  I'm not baking multiple loaves a week, nor am I going through formal training to become a baker.  However I do have lots of books and recipes that I've tried repeatedly.  The first bread I ever made was a focaccia bread from a recipe I found in a USENET posting way back in the early days of the internet.  It was all I could find at the time.  Throughout college I used that plus the recipe for fre

After about 22-23 hours in transit from Johannesburg, which includes a 4-hour layover in Atlanta, I arrived in Kansas City just after noon on Friday.  It's a wonderful thing.  And kinda weird at the same time.

No baking this weekend.  That will probably wait until next weekend.  Meanwhile, I've been keeping busy with things like buying a pickup, getting a new cell phone, catching up with friends and neighbors, revisiting some favorite restaurants, yard work, sleeping, etc.