Blog posts

In my last croissant post(see here), I said I am practicing once or twice every week to perfect my lamination skill. It's been more than a month, and my croissant fever is getting hotter -- sadly, what's heating up faster is TX temperature. If you look up "mission impossible" or "self punishment" in the dictionary, you might see the following picture (28C is about 82F):

Continuing on my croissant project, to practice making croissants, this week I turned them into almond croissants.

 "my fifth time making croissants, getting more comfortable with them, but still more practices to do:)"

Almond croissant is my most favorite pastry item. It is buttery, crisp, moist, sweet and nutty, what is not to love in this little pasty of indulgence?

I made another loaf of my orange-raisin bread and refined my working recipe a bit, adding weights and some specifics on the marmalade step.

My working recipe is now as follows:

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Challah and I have a history.

When I was 15, I tried making my first bread. Having watched my mother (but never having helped her) since I was little, making bread (particularly oatmeal brown bread) from scratch, I figured it would be a snap. After all, I was able to pick up my mother's cookies and cake recipes with no problem, so what's so different about bread?

I was about to find out.

In honor of National Pretzel Day in the US (yesterday):

I came across this recipe in paper and thought it was worth a try, all the ingredients make this one a pocket full of flavour, which I am sure you will enjoy.

I try my best to explain where and why I deviated from the original recipe with bold and italic letters...

Una bella gita a Berlino ... e non potevano mancare alcuni dei migliori forni Berlinesi. Una grande città perfetta per i ciclisti come me, bici, bici, bici, segale, segale, segale ... tanti chilometri e lo zaino sempre colmo dell'inebriante profumo del pane di segale. Portare mattoncini nello zaino non è il massimo per girare in bici ma ne valeva la pena.

Recently Andy posted on his Pain Au Levain with Light Rye.   http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/23199/pain-au-levain-light-rye-flour  His formula was quite similar to something I had tried awhile ago http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/22372/sourdough-white-rye with a major difference: the percentage of fermented flour, which was more than double what I had used (33.3% rather than 16%).   I decided to try Andy's approach.  I followed his directions with the fo

I was amazed how wheat germs enhanced bread flavor when I made David (dmsnyder)'s famous SFBI miche a couple of months ago. I liked it a lot that I wanted to try making more breads with wheat germs.

Well, I can be easily distracted with other baking projects, bread ideas, new books, etc. Now, two months later, I finally got the chance to make a plain sourdough with toasted wheat germs added. 

Ecco l'ultimo pane con Buratto (solo lievito naturale liquido). Il precedente è stato un clamoroso fallimento, si poteva mangiare ma ...

Here tha last loaf with Buratto flour (only liquid levain). The previous one was a failure, I mean you could eat that loaf but ...