Blog posts

I love pumpkin, but when my husband came home with three huge pumpkins, I worried.  What am going to do with all these pumpkins, I asked. I got no reply.   He had gone camping with our son and our son's friend at our farm, two hours north west of Brisbane.  The caretaker's wife keeps a small patch of vegetable garden and every now and then she gives me something from her vege garden.  My favorite are cherry tomatoes and silverbeets.   These pumpkins are from her garden too.     

1983, I was in my mid-20's in Boston doing my final year of post graduate studies under Rotary scholarship.  A memorable year as it was the first time ever in my life that I went overseas.  My host family, Bob, is from Armenia and Maria, Germany; both came to America in their late teens.  One day they drove me to New York to visit the Metropolitan Museum.  We had lunch at a posh side walk cafe; the waiter brought us curious black color bread rolls.  As Maria was eating, she couldn't stop raving about these dense looking bread 

I baked two sourdough's today. The first, David's Pain de Campagne is rapidly becoming one of my favorite breads because it's so easy to make, is practically foolproof, and has such a wonderful flavor and crumb. I use Guisto's Baker's Choice instead of KA French style flour for this bread, and my own home-ground wholemeal rye. (I think Guisto's Bakers Choice has about 10.5% protein, so it is softer than KAAP.)

Work has been brutally busy, so bread had to go on the back burner. I did manage to get out some sandwich bread and a couple no-knead SD. The sandwich bread is a little sweet since that's the way I like it and the SD has about 25% WW by weight. I did get a little flour rolled into the SD when I shaped it, but luckily it wasn't too much. The house smelled great today. Dave

 I was getting tired of covering my mixing bowl with plastic wrap to keep the dough from drying out while it fermented.  For me, unrolling, tearing, stretching plastic wrap has always been like wrestling an octopus.  Besides, I hate throwing it away after using it for a few hours.  I wanted to find a dough fermentation bin that had a top that would keep in the moisture but wasn't airtight.  I was buying half sheet pans at my local Smart-n-Final and noticed what looked like the perfect containers.

There must be a more proper name for this loaf, but it looks like a brick and feels like a brick, so I named it 'brick bread'.  The idea came from a loaf I once tried out of curiosity.  There was a night-and-day difference between that loaf and the fluffy, buttery Hong Kong /Japanese style breads I grew up with, but its texture was certainly interesting.  I'd been contemplating making it but was not able to find a formula either here at the forum or online.

I think one of the biggest differences between commercial artisan bakeries, that bake every day, and the amateur that bakes once or even twice a week is how each handles levain day-to-day. From my reading I've gleaned the commercial baker keeps his or her levain (starter) at room temperature, and feeds it on a periodic schedule every 8 or 12 hours. (I'm an amateur, so, experts, please correct me if I'm terribly wrong). on the other hand, most amateurs keep thier starters at refrigerator temperature (~40°F), and feed them once weekly, or less often.

Yes I did it.  I found rye flour in Seoul, South Korea, in the Bangsan Market between wall paper shops and packaging tucked into the alleyways kept cool in the winding shadows from the burning sun.  I found two different ryes, that with my third, and my unending curiosity can only lead to one thing.... a comparison.  I have already gathered that there might be some flavor differences evidenced by the interesting additives in North American recipes...

Sourdough is going great right now.  Things have changed a lot.  I had been doing Xtreme low maintenance with my seed culture but ultimately I was disappointed.  Sure it bakes bread and sure it's very low maintenance, but I've been getting more and more suspicious that the oven spring has not be spectacular due to my culture maintenance technique. 

and I have to say it was very, very good!  There was no specific bean taste, although it was wheat-y.   I don't mind that at all though.  My husband is all about putting peanut butter on whatever bread I make.  It honestly doesn't matter what kind it is....which I find rather funny.  His favorites I would have to say are the ryes though.

Liseling posted her Pinto bean bread in this thread: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/12214/pinto-bean-bread