Blog posts

Jan Hedh, the Swedish bread, pastry and chocolate master, has recently put out his second bread book; the new one is titled "Bröd & kaffebröd" ("Bread and pastries"). I've just picked it up, and baked the first loaf from that book this weekend. It's an inspiring book, written in a style similar to his first bread book, but this one's filled with even more gorgeous photos. Hedh is passionate about bread, and provides detailed recipes for several European style hearth loaves and for breakfast pastries (mostly croissant, Danish and sweet dough oriented stuff).

These breads were made with my recently activated San Francisco Sourdough starter from sourdo.com. I used 100 gms of starter fed with a mix of AP, WW and Rye flours, 500 gms KAF Sir Lancelot flour, 360 gms water, 10 gms salt. The formed loaves were cold retarded for about 14 hours.

I was going to make P.

I looked into my pantry today and found rye flour, whole wheat flour, rice flour, barley flour, cake flour, pizza flour, and high gluten flour for making bagels but no bread flour.  So, like ApplePie, I decided to go flour shopping.

I'm a compulsive baker.  When I'm in a grocery store, sometimes I walk down the baking ingredients aisle, even if I don't need anything, just to look.  Pulling a freshly baked apple pie or loaf of bread from the oven, with its aroma wafting through the house with the promise of deliciousness to come, is one of the most enjoyable experiences in life, in my opinion.

I'll try again

It has been too long since I made bread for my neighbors, aka "The Old People", and as I had a large yogurt container of SD discard today was the day. Or rather yesterday evening when I made the dough. I started with a quart of discard and about the same amount of warm water then added old fashioned oats, dried milk, oil, sugar, 1T instant yeast and salt and added KA white whole wheat flour and Wheat Montana ap flour. Like quahtan I lost count of the exact amount - just kept adding until the dough cleaned the sides of the bowl. Oh, I was using my trusty Bosch mixer.

I've seen some lovely variations on E.K. Baguette Monge and it's started my craving.  I used King Arthur All Purpose flour and K.A.

Waffles are a form of quick bread, so I thought I'd share a recipe for pumpkin waffles that I've been working on + post some photos of them! Let me know what you think.

The initial mix of dry ingredients...


Whisk to blend...


The initial mix of wet ingredients (butter not yet added)...

So, as you all already know, World Bread Day happens to coincide with Floyd's birthday. This year, I decided to try the recipe that qahtan had posted here in this forum a while ago (which keeps coming up in discussion) for the Guinness Stout chocolate cake.