Blog posts

It rained all day here yesterday which is good as I decided to bake all day.  I had chosen to make dmsnyder's San Joaquin adaptation and have another go at the 1,2,3 formula which has only been successful for me once.  I am sorry that I didn't stick to the recipes and got my timing all out of whack!  With the 1,2,3 recipe I added about 15% rye and maybe 20% wholemeal instead of all white.  I didn't get the rise out of it that I was hoping for, but was saved by some oven spring.

This information is for all my friends at TFL.  Help is badly needed.  Calling all Ronray male and female for help.  Here is the scoop:  After baking sourdough and other yeast bread succesfully for almost a year and a half, I felt smuck. So to bake some simple bread like "buttermilk Bread" from Laurel 's kitchen bread book is nothing, so I thought. But, I was wrong. The result was so disappointing that I am shocked.  Here is the recipe:

7 g. active dry yeast

1/2 c. warm water (120ml)

3/4 c. very hot water (175ml)

No pictures, I am just recording this recipe here for my own use, really, but feel free to try it out! This is my first effort at recreating a bread my father made a lot when I was young. It's not wildly far off, but needs some work.

Evening of Day 0

Make a poolish: 1 cup warm water, a pinch of yeast, 1 cup bread flour. Mix, let stand out (covered) overnight.

Morning of Day 1

The poolish should be active, inflated, and bubbly. If not, wait until it is.

Well I decided to do something good for our health. Something I did 25 years ago and before when my young family was growing. I used to grind my own wheat and make my own bread from whole wheat grain. Everything we ate was fresh and full of nutrition and fiber. Then I married the Italian (half Irish too) and he wanted white bread or Irish soda bread etc. Not gonna touch the brown stuff. So I sold all my equipment to buy a stove! Big mistake. But seemed the thing to do at the time. Make the hubby happy! I wanted a new stove too!

Hi everyone, have not written for ages on the site and I now have the chance to have a baking stone brought from a relative going to Miami...can anyone suggest any place? thanks in advance. Paolo from Quito

Last week we bought a bag full of assorted apples from a farmer. Not only the bag was huge, the size of some of the apples (Macoun) was gigantic, too. What to do with all these beautiful apples? A dreary day makes you think of comfort food, and there's that old saying: "Life is uncertain - eat the dessert first". I'm never one to resist the craving for dessert, anyway, and the oven was still warm from baking bread in the morning.

Help! Somebody stop me from churning out more bread than even my freezer can handle... or... wait a minute.. I NEED A BIGGER FREEZER!!!!

I had my first try at croissants. We won't talk about that. Not at all.

The second attempt though was much more satisfactory. I made them too small, in retrospect, and by doing so I think I restricted the layers from really fully developing, but everything was there; the crunch, the slightly chewy core, a nice taste and flavor; subtle buttersweet. I'll put on some pics of the crumb later, and for now; here's how I did it.

This bread was meant to be brought to the picnic with my girlfriends and their kids. It was raining for the whole weekend and we had to cancel it. So, the bread ended up being my breakfast and weekend snacks...a happy weekend for me.

I thought this might be of interest to fellow limeys, both here in the States and back home. My English neighbor gave me a well used booklet "Home recipes with Be-Ro Self Raising Flour" and "Home Recipes with Be-Ro Plain Flour". This had belonged to her mother, and unfortunately there is no date anywhere but Mary is 80 years old so it has to be pretty old. The recipes are given in grams and ounces and there are lots of pictures and useful hints and tips.