Blog posts

Today's bake: Rustic Bread from this site.  I haven't cut into it yet, but I have a feeling that it will have a nice, open texture.  I didn't add any flour than what was in the recipe, so the result was a rather sticky dough that had so many bubbles while shaping that it got rather difficult.  The dough was so lose that after shaping into a boule with as tight a skin as I could make, I had a rather flat pancake at the end of the final rise.  But it had the best oven spring I have ever seen in a bread!

The formula:

300 g firm starter

620 g water

750 g unbleached AP flour (530 g Morbread 12% protein, and 200 g Whole Food AP)

100 g wheat bran

23 g salt

The technique was similar to the San Joaquin Sourdough posted on Fresh Loaf

Submitted to Wild Yeast's Yeast Spotting: http://www.wildyeastblog.com/category/yeastspotting/

I am looking for recipes on how prepare and to bake these types of breads-memories of Puerto Rico 1950's early 60's.

From Maggie Glezer’s "Artisan Breads" again, the recipe can be found online here: http://mightymuffinblog.com/2008/04/07/polenta-bread/ , I highly recommend buying the book though.

Until I found this site, I had never heard of spelt much less cooked with it.   Today's entry in my seven breads in seven days self-teaching event is a multigrain batard with spelt.   I made this using (slightly modified) no-knead methods.   This loaf lost its shape a bit while baking and looks like a boule from one side and a batard from the other.  

This Sunday I baked one "test" baguette as I had been a bit busy playing with a new toy (an allotment!) so the dough had been a bit neglected and not worked much etc. The recipe was (loosely) based around the proth5 65% hydration baguette but my flour was a mix of some leftover french Pain de Campagne flour with some Spelt and 00 to make up around 300grams (the starter was rye). As it did not seem to be very lively or rising much so I did the test bake and put the rest in the fridge overnight as I thought the dough did not look very promising.

I thought I'd share my (not bake),  but steamed chinese rice cake here.  This is something that is so dear to my heart,  as it reminded me of the time that I spent hours helping my mom doing this,  every year diligently, for some festivities.  Now that I'm away from home,  it's just something to remind me of home, family,  and I want to pass this little tradition to my little boy,  he did help out,  and did it well indeed.

Ok, first off I have to admit that up until dinner all I ate all day was BREAD (plus an apple). Now, I don't know how I feel about that, but I can tell you it sure was tasty and I hope my husband and son will eat the rest, so that I don't have to be tempted to eat some more bread for dessert.

Today's bread is a pain de compagne.   I used and modified Bernard Clayton's instructions for Madame Doz's bread.   Compared to the milk bread I made yesterday, this is long and involved, with many steps that make the scheduling difficult, especially for a beginning bread baker, who generally can't hang around the kitchen all day.   So I allowed myself more flexibility on the times than what Clayton specified, and looked more at the condition of the dough than the clock to decide if I could get away with going late or early on several of the steps. &n

What with having dinner guests on Saturday and more coming on Monday, it was a wonderful excuse for puttering around in the kitchen this weekend.  I started with Pain au Levain from Leader's Local Breads Saturday morning and followed with Rich and Tender Dinner Rolls from The King Arthur Flour 200th Anniversary Cook Book and finished up with a Chocolate / Chocolate Chip cake, source unknown.