Blog posts

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.

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

This bread was inspired by a post at Wild Yeast Blog (and also my inner frugality and curiosity) about incorporating old bread into the dough. The idea is also based on the bread-making wisdom that old bread will improve bread flavour and its keeping quality.

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.

Horst Bandel's Black Pumpernickel

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.

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.

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!

Thanks are due at the top to Farine-MC for her charming blog and its marvelous, useful content, and also to breadsong, scoring master and exemplary baker.

In brief, I neglected to take account of the very low humidity in New York City right now. My maple oatmeal was both too stiff and underproofed. Yes, I made the same mistake two weeks ago with another loaf. Now I have two striked against me, so I hope that atleast it will be something different that I overlook next time. The effects of the underproofing are clear on the batard.

I have undertaken the BBA challenge for 2011 but I am not one to follow directions.  I am making the recipes in the order that they appeal to me or what I have a desire to bake.  This does however mean that I will be on my own during the challenge without a number of supporters.  My family decided they wanted some cinnamon rolls, so i pulled out the bba and went to work