Blog posts

Bronx-to-Barn Baker...glad to be back to baking

It feels great to be back on the bike. Made my first loaf of a long-fermenting bread after more than a year away from real baking. I'm still getting my sea legs back, but there were glossy holes in the crumb and the crust sang when I pulled the loaves of Country Bread (Hamelman) from the oven.

Will post photos this evening.

Sylvia

Formula Development IV - You only try twice

Toast

It's a slow, agonizing sort of thing that I do.  (Especially being able to bake only once a week.  Hey, King Arthur Flour - if you need a full time high altitude test baker - call me!)  I would like to have the genius to throw many things in the bowl of My Preciousss confident that it will be good bread, but that is not me.  It never has been and I strongly suspect that it never will.  Even if the bread was delicious, I would pound myself with "what if I had done X or Y - would it be better?" No, better to stay single factor.

Football Bread

For the game yesterday, I baked this rustic loaf to munch on during the game with spreads and cold cuts. The football shape was in the spirit of the Super Bowl game in which our home team, the now WORLD CHAMPION Green Bay Packers, was a participant and victor. Imagine my surprise when I cut into the loaf to see this crumb pattern? The karma is thick around these parts when the Packers are playing.

Eric

SFBI Miche - A big one!

Toast

This miche is from David's wonderful post here. I didn't change a thing. Even kept the weight exactly same at 2KG, which makes it the biggest bread I've ever made. I debated using high extraction flour instead, but decided to use AP and WW as SFBI specified just to see how it will come out. Can you tell? I tried to draw Tic-Tac-Toe with my scoring pattern, kinda hard to see after being baked for so long.

 

Saturday Baguettes - Week...er...something

Toast

Well, dear readers, despite my recent silence on the subject I have not given up on my baguette quest!  For the last few weeks, however, I'd gotten a little sick of blogging about it.  This week was fairly successful, however, and so I want to share, and request some feedback.

Not quite there...

Profile picture for user pmccool

We were invited to a Cajun-themed dinner party last evening at a friend's house here in Pretoria.  Not the easiest thing to pull off in South Africa but it turned out pretty well, considering the limitations.

Luminita Cirstea’s Raisin-Rye (courtesy of farine-mc)

Hello everyone,
Farine featured Luminita Cirstea in a 'Meet the Baker' post on her website.
Ms. Cirstea's courage, hard work, commitment and talent are so inspiring!
I so wanted to try making Ms. Cirstea's delicious-looking (and prize-winning!) Raisin-Rye bread.
With thanks to Farine for writing about Ms. Cirstea, and thanks to Ms. Cirstea for her efforts to develop this formula!