Blog posts

They call it the most important meal of the day, and I tend to agree with them. Get off to a good start, for instance with your morning newspaper, a cup of black coffee and some still-hot-from-the-oven breakfast rolls, and you're at least halfway there. Yesterday, I mixed, bulk fermented and shaped some mini-batards from a batch of Hamelman's "Semolina bread with a whole-grain soaker" formula (p. 137 in "Bread"). This delicious and simple formula is extremely versatile; I've used it for regular breads, rolls and some uttely delicious, crunchy baguette-shaped loaves in the past.

I have to give a shout out to Dan Lepard for the inspiration on this bread. You see, I really like tamarind so I've been kicking around the idea in the back of my head that I would like to make some bread with tamarind in it. However, I wasn't taking the thought too seriously given the tartness of tamarind fruit. Then the other day, I happened to be randomly perusing Dan Lepard's website, danlepard.com, and I came across his recipe for a tamarind date cake. I thought, oooh, that sounds delicious... and then lightning struck! Of course!

Actually a few of these are from Montpellier too, like the first few:

We just got back from our first trip to Europe with kids, our first trip overseas in nearly twelve years. We spent most of it in southern France but flew in and out of Paris.

Today's baking was my (less sweetened) version of the German Many Seed Bread from "Whole Grain Baking". Instead of a soaker and a biga I used just the soaker with stretch & fold technique for the first time, adding some more water. The breads turned out really nice, I think it's an improvement.

Sorry, no crumb shot - these breads were for sale.

I made my San Joaquin Sourdough today with a couple of modifications.

Hello,

I picked up the CIA book "Artisan Breads at Home" by Eric Kastel from the library and was delighted to find a recipe for Chipotle Sourdough, using pureed chipotle chiles in adobo as an add-in.

For 48 ounces of dough, the recipe calls for 2.6 ounces of pureed chipotles combined with 1.3 ounces whole wheat flour as the add-in; I kneaded this in by hand at the end of mixing.

I followed the detailed postings and the bread was a success. It is very easy to handle and the shaping /scoring are a cinch due to the texture after all that chilling. I loved the crust and crumb. It exploded with crumbs when we broke into the loaf....just as the New Orleans French bread used to do before they ruined the way they make it. I will definitely be making this again and again. I used the 1/2 tsp yeast and didn't get much rise in the  fridge over the 24 hr period. I was a little worried but it did great in the oven. Here are pics.

I continue to bake in my mud oven - in fact I haven't baked any bread at all in my "indoor" oven so far this summer.   It is a steep learning curve.   Since I last posted, I have added a thermometer and a door (essential) a peel (helpful) and have started to use parchment paper to keep things cleaner.   I continue to make my slow progress through Hamelman's Bread.   Today I tried Semolina with a levain.  (page 171)   I split it into three small loaves which are a bit more manageable.    Here they are.