Blog posts

Last week I've been enjoying a variation of the pain au levain I blogged about in my previous post - I'm really loving the bite the breads get by the rye sourdough. For the loaf pictured below, I raised the whole-grain amount slightly and added a healthy dose of walnuts. I'm such a sucker for walnuts; only bad thing about them is that they're not a "local food" around these parts. The ones I find in the stores are pricey and have travelled all the way from California... Still my favourite nuts, though.

When I blogged on my last weekend's baking, I threw in a photo of the pasta batch I had also made. Well, the pasta generated as much discussion as the breads … maybe more. So, I thought I'd write up the pasta dish we had for dinner tonight. (I know it's not bread, but I hope it's okay to post it on TFL anyway.)

Fettuccine with Turkey Sausage and Kale

I just made this bread the other day after watching Michael Smith on Foodtv. He was going on about how good the crust comes out if you bake the bread in a covered pot. The recipe can be seen at:  http://www.foodnetwork.ca/recipes/recipe.html?dishid=9530

I used the pot method. Also the recipe I used was the "city bread" recipe. Followed the recipe to the letter. The dough was very wet, exactley the same as a poolish for french bread, a little hard to handle but I was gentle.

The recipe can be found here: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/8524/philippe-gosselin039s-pain-%C3%A0-l039ancienne-according-peter-reinhart-interpretted-dmsnyder-m - thank you David!

"Le Pain" by comic artist John Martz

Hi

This is just a quickie to show how I prefer this bread; as a steamed "pudding".   The "Pullman Pan" is ideal to make sandwiches, but I prefer not to bake this loaf.   Steaming time for a 600g loaf is about 8 hours!   Cool, then wrap in linen for 24 hours.   Finally, this loaf can now be sliced for eating; AND, it's so good!

Photographic evidence attached:

I love fresh bagels and croissants, but being a household of one, these present a challenge: I can't (and more important, shouldn't) sit down and eat my way through a half dozen at a time.  The other side of the challenge is the impracticality of making up either dough for just a couple bagels or croissants.

Hello all!!

Has anybody ever tried to make the recipe at the back of the package of Rogers Rye flour??

Well, I am making it right now, it's on its first rise. As always there is something wrong with my dough, it was very very super wet, the recipe calls for 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 cups of white flour in addition to the 3 cups of rye flour. Although the recipe does not call for sifting the flour prior to measuring, I did it, (for the first time, I took the time to sift the flours). By the way I used 3 1/2.

Nothing new in today's baking, but these are two of my favorites.

The San Francisco Sourdough is from Suas' "Advanced Bread and Pastry." I fed my stock starter to make a firm levain with KAF Bread Flour and BRM Dark Rye. The final dough was mixed with KAF AP. The San Joaquin Sourdough was made as previously described (many times). This batch was made with a 73% hydration dough.

I feel my bâtard shaping is coming along. I'm using the technique described in Hamelman's "Bread."