Blog posts

I'm feeding my levain tonight, plan on baking on Sunday ...for real this time.  My wife and I are going out for dinner tomorrow since it's our 6th anniversary.  That would conflict with a late afternoon Saturday baking, so I'll bake for sure on Sunday and probably also on Monday to get caught up with The Bread Challenge.  Sunday will be Hamelmans Whole Wheat Bread w/pate fermentee and Monday will be his whole wheat bread with soaker.  I'm looking forward to trying a soaker since I haven't tried that method yet

When I bake baguettes, they are coming out too dark on the bottom, too light on top.  I have a baking stone in the floor of my oven (GE Profile gas) and I place the loaves in the perforated baguette trays in the middle of the oven.  Also, the thermometer I place inside the oven reads a lower temperature than what the digital oven temperature indicator says, by anywhere from 25 to 50 degrees. 

I left home on Feb 19th to ride across the US on my bicycle. I started in St. Augustine FL on Feb 26th and  I completed the ride on April 28th in San Diego CA. It was a wonderful time of hard work and fun and finding out how strong I am in lots of different ways. I was doing this to raise awareness of hunger in this country and called my ride Pedaling for Food. My local food bank was the recipient of all the money and food that was donated locally . They placed bins in the local Kroger stores and at my Golds gym. The local newspaper wrote up my ride and helped to increase awareness .

I had a visit by a rep from my wholesaler, Downeast Food Distributors, who left a sample of a new gluten free bake mix to test some bread and pastry recipes. It consists of a mixture of rice flour, potato starch, sugar, salt and 5 different gums plus methylcellulose. This chemical array is necessary to enable the bread to rise at all and not fall apart.

These rings (based on the recipe for 'Greek Sesame Galettes (Κουλούρια)' in "Mediterranean Street Food" by Anissa Helou) were baked in the barbecue.

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It was hot in the kitchen. It was noon. But I mixed the dough anyway. And because it was so ridiculously hot , it was ready to be baked by dinnertime. We baked the rings in the barbecue.

My wrist was declared healed about two weeks ago, and I am thrilled to be able to stretch and fold (both in the bowl and out) and shape two handed again!

Here is one of loaves I made first:

This is the 1,2,3 formula with the addition of dried rosemary which I soak in warmed olive oil.  I add both the rosemary and oil to the dough late in the first mixing.  This is one of my favorite breads.

here is today's loaf!  it turned out well.  I made the french loaf from "The bread breakers apprentice" but tried the stretch and fold technique instead of kneading.  It worked;  I was amazed.  I put the dough in the fridge overnight and shaped them cold on the counter.  I had a hard time getting them off the counter.  I cooked it at 500 (by accident, forgot to turn it down to 450 when I put the loaves in) with steam.

My love affair with my 50 year old GE Hotpoint 40" range has been, literally, on and off these past few weeks.