Blog posts

First I want to say hello to all of you again after being "away at my summer job".  I've missed you all, and have not even had much time to just lurk, let alone post.  I've purposely held back from posting knowing I could, at any time, be completely unable to follow up or hold up my end on a discussion.  The latest part of Spring and the main part of Summer are my very busiest times of the year, when weeks and even entire months can and do go by without a break.  I've had the liberty of rearranging my schedule some this year so I have had some daylight time off, as a tra

At the risk of sneers from the lean dough purists, one of my fondest bread memories is of the Onion-Curry-Cheese Bread from The Cheese Board Collective in Berkeley.  When I was a gradual student in the late '70s, walking through what has since become known as "The Gourmet Ghetto" (Cheese Board, Chez Panisse, Pig-by-the-Tail charcuterie, Lenny's Butcher and a great fishmonger whose name escapes me, all within two blocks), I would know from a hundred yards away that this delectable savory bread had just come out of the oven.  And I would make a bee-line.

For my second bake from Richard Bertinet's 'Crust' I wanted to try something with ingredients I've never used before. The recipe that caught my eye was his Breton Bread as it calls for sel-gris and buckwheat flour, neither of which I've had any experience with. For anyone not familiar with sel-gris, it's an unrefined sea salt from Brittany that's very course and gray coloured. It's flavour is a little sharp at first, but leaves a subtle aftertaste of minerals that's quite pleasant. I think I'll be using it in my future baking quite a bit, particularly for rustic breads.

Hello to all you Loafers!

This is my first blog entry and I thought I'd start out with my second most recent endeavor (I made sourdough bagels but didn't take any pictures!). I'd like to give a little preempt by saying that I am only slightly Jewish by blood and an Atheist at heart. That being said, if you have any Jewish blood or get Anthropological hard-ons, purchase Maggie Glezer's A Blessing of Bread NOW! This book is filled to the brim with traditional but well tested/formulated recipes and all the stories, traditions and techniques that go with them.

I wanted to have fresh homemade sourdough hamburger buns for a big cook-out last Friday. Problem: the cook-out was at 7pm on a work night, and I'd only get home around 5:45. Timing and fridge space were issues. I wouldn't have time to shape buns and let them rise after work, and don't have room for sheet pans in my fridge (I live with 4 other people). This is what I came up with...

I recently purchased Peter Reinhart's artisan breads every day. I have been kneading by hand and wanted to try the minimal mixing, overnight cold ferment sytle recipes he provides to see what kind of rise/crumb structure I could get. We were having company for dinner last night whose diet required only whole wheat bread so I decided to make a half batch of each of the Lean Bread and 100% WW Hearth Bread. I had never made a 100% WW.

Hey All,

I've been making a lot of bread lately. Had some extra that I either needed to throw away or make something out of. They won't let you feed it to the ducks in Portland, you know. So, I used my remarkable internet research skills to look for recipes using leftover bread. Apparently, many people just make bread crumbs and put them in the freezer. I was looking for something a little more exciting.

Prehistory: waaaay back in 2007, I was obsessed with making Neapolitan pizza at home--self-clean cycle, quarry tiles, Jeff Varasano. That's where I first learned about autolysing and slow fermentation. And it explains my unhealthy preoccupation with getting the wide open crumb. During this time I also made some nice lemon rolls (from a sticky bun recipe, minus the cinnamon, minus sticky topping, lemon zest in place of cinnamon: