Blog posts

This past Monday my wife and I arrived home from our very first visit to Europe where we spent 3 nights in Prague, then 8 full days cruising the Danube from Germany, through Austria, Slovakia, and finally disembarking in Budapest. It was a marvelous trip which we enjoyed immensely, but as always it's good to get back home, especially after spending 10 + hours flying, transferring, waiting to fly, then transferring twice more before landing back on Vancouver Island.

I went to the local Italian store and bought 5 pound of Antimo Caputo (from Naples) flour.   First of all, it is expensive.  I think it was $5 for 4 pounds or was it $15 for 5 pounds, I do not remember.   I didn't care because I wanted to try it.

I made several 1 pound portions, used two and froze the others in separate oiled freezer bags.

Replication Bake of Emulsified Raisin
Yeast Water Loaf

For the initial loaf, see
link:

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/23945/emulsified-raisin-yeast-water-loaf

So I wanted to make a batch of Black Canyon sourdough last night, to repay my neighbor for the 2 lbs of fresh-caught cod he gave us. No mise en place. Pretty distracted after work etc. But in I plunged, only to come up about 1.5 C short of All-Purpose flour. Doh! So I used a combo of spelt, oat and White Whole Wheat bread flour from Whole Foods. It took about 45-50 minutes of vigorous kneading by hand to get any structure and windowpane.

I made a pizza last week, that turned out very good.  I addapted the recipe from hamelman's BREAD. I made a stiff levain instead of biga, and omit the oil. I used canned tomatoes made by me last summer, fresh mozzarella, dried oregano, and fresh basil added in the end. I put the stone at the lowest level in my gas oven, and the pizza was done in 7-8 minutes. It's the best I can do at home. The crust was absolutely delicious!!!

I have been going through a bit of a baking drought lately, but on Friday lunch refreshed my starter so that I could bake when I got off work in the evening.  I hadn't planned on anything, but when I got home and found the starter at its peak, I had to act quickly and there was no time for elaborate planning.  Accordingly, I just ad libbed and this is what I did.  

100g mature starter @ 100% hydration

250g water

3g diastatic malt

50g rye flour

Here’s my favorite variation on my favorite bread--the Basic Country Bread from Tartine Bread.   Since it’s now my most frequent bake, I figured I should write up my procedure both for my own reference and the breadblogosphere.

This weekend, I decided to  bake a sweet bread to serve as dessert for our father's day family gathering.  I ho and hummed for a few days over what to bake and finally decided on Reinhart's Chocolate Cinnamon Babka bread from ABED.  What's not to love about sweet dough, chocolate, and cinnamon, right?  Then I thought, "Wouldn't chocolate, cinnamon, AND hazelnuts be even more to love?"  So, that's what I did...  After rolling out the dough, I spread a thin layer of Nutella, sprinkled with the chocolate cinnamon paste, and then sprinkled again with chopped hazeln

Ingredients: