Blog posts

It's the time of the year where blistering cold winds sweep the city and the surrounding mountainside. Rest assured, no matter how many layers you put on, the cold will penetrate them and get to you eventually. I'm certain that the freezing temperatures are partly to blame for me baking a dense Schrotbrot this week... I had a careful look over my kitchen shelves, pencil in hand, and jotted down potential ingredients for a solid log. I had a vague idea of what I wanted, but this turned out quite good I think.

This week's Schrotbrot:

Here are some of the breads that I bake regularly and offer to customers!

Recipies are surely to come.

Rick

Wake and Bake Bread Company.

L to R; Back Row: Mixed-Grain Levain, Sourdough Rye, Pain Au Levain.
Middle Row: Pain Au Levain, Sourdough Rye, Mixed-Grain Levain.
Front Row: Pumpernickel Rye

This is my first post on here, with much more to come I hope!  :)

Just thought I'd start by posting a pic of some Stout Beer Sourdough Rye Baguettes I made with a homemade stout beer.

They turned out wonderfully!

Rick

Wake and Bake Bread Co.

Inspired by Farine's beautiful Sweet Potato Bread, I made a few adjustments and am calling this bread, "Warm Comfort Bread."

It all started with that chestnut pie I made, amazing pie really, how can it not be? It had chestnut cream, chestnut puree, candied chestnut, creme fraiche, mascarpone, heavy cream all loaded in one flaky all butter crust!

Introduction to bread baking

Bread has been baked since 4000 BCE. Keep this in mind while reading this and other bread books or information. So really all you need is some simple tools, flour (in this intro flour quality won't be a huge issue), salt, water, an oven, and most importantly time.

Tools

These are some pics of whole wheat ciabatta with fermented wheat berries and flax seed loaves I made the other day.  I made them with a sourdough I started by using the leftover water from boiled potatoes, whole wheat, and white flour.  The culture sprung up very quickly using this method.  I wasn't originally intending to make ciabatta, but the dough was so wet i needed to fold it in flour and use a couche to keep it together.  I only had enough room in the oven for three smaller loaves and one large monster that I proofed in a basket.  Has anyo

Friday was my first bake of the new year, and I tried my hand a BBA's Italian bread.

I mixed the biga Thursday afternoon, before heading of to the South Alabama basketball game (we lost, by 3, in OT), and put into the fridge during halftime in the BCS championship game ("Bama won, if you hadn't heard—Roll, Tide, Roll).

After several not-so-happy outcomes, and one pleasing outcome, it was obvious that I needed to get better acquainted with the South African flours that I have.  Previous bakes seemed to indicate that the flours' absorbency was different than I was anticipating, based on my previous experience with U.S.-produced flours.  The only way to find out what was going on with any certainty was to do side-by-side bakes of identical breads, adjusting only one variable (hydration, in this case) at a time so that I could compare the outcomes.