Blog posts

Yesterday I tried the ciabatta pizza that trailrunner posted about a week ago. I was very impressed with the results.

I've been threatening to collapse my San Francisco starter and call it a day because it performs much slower than my other starters.  At the last minute, David (dmsnyder) brought to my attention James MacGuire's other recipe, Miche, Pointe-a-Calliere in Hamelman's "Bread," as well as Pain Poilane in Daniel Leader's "Local Breads."  The full title of the latter is "Whole Wheat Sourdough Miche inspried by Pain Poilane, pain au levain complet," and according to Daniel Leader, it is "a symbol of artisanal excellence in France and around the world."  David also mentioned Pete

Shiao-Ping's blog entry on James McGuire's Pain de Tradition  certainly stimulated a lot of interest. I made the sourdough version a couple days ago. Today, I made the straight dough version.

The formula is in Shiao-Ping's posting. I followed it, changing only the flours. I used Giusto's Baker's Choice rather than KAF AP, and I used 10% KAF Organic White Whole Wheat. 

       [color=brown]Sourdough Black Tea Bread - using James MacGuire's Pain de Tradition procedure[/color]

What about using a bread machine for doing the dough process for some recipes? I did it for making dinner rolls and they came out very good.  ed    

Even before the recent crop of beautiful breads made with James McGuire's “Pain de Tradition” formula, I had been planning to bake the “Miche, Point-à-Callière” from Hamelman's “Bread” this weekend. Hamelman attributes this bread to McGuire, whose intention was to replicate the type of bread baked by the first French settlers of what ultimately became Montreal. The name of the bread, “Pointe-à-Callière,” was the name of their first settlement.

My third Scali

I'm adding this to my blog. It's also in Sylvia's post for Scali bread.

Well, I watched Bobby Flay take on The Elegant Farmer in Mukwanago, WI. in an apple pie throwdown. The Elegant Farmer did his with a sugar cookie crust done in a brown paper bag. I just had to try it. Eating it all ourselves would have been selfish so we had another couple over for dessert on the deck. I'm not artistic and don't try. Here's the pie. It was great.

Sorry, no beer in this one, just black and tan sesame seeds!

The very warm weather has impacted my breadmaking, too.  Starter and dough were taking off way too fast, but using cold water slows things down enough.  I used 50F water yesterday evening to mix this loaf.  I should have used sesame oil rather than olive oil.

15g Starter, 210g water, 1 tsp EVOO, 25g KA WWW, 275g All-Trumps, 6g salt, 2 T mixed sesame seeds

Daniel Leader's book, Local Breads, is simultaneously one of the most intriguing and most frustrating bread books.  His breads are rooted in the baking traditions of several European countries, but rendered in ingredients and techniques that are generally accessible to home bakers in the United States.  Many are utterly delicious and lovely to behold.  But ... one has to recognize going in that a number of the formulae are riddled with errors, often in the quantity or proportion of the dough ingredients.