Blog posts

2 nd try at Michel Suas Whole Wheat Sourdough Bread - Advanced Bread and Pastry

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This week I tried Michel Suas' whole wheat sourdough bread for the second time.  I made four pounds of dough and divided it into 2 loaves (2 lbs each).  The leavening is an overnight levain.  After reading Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads I decided to take a little different approach and prior to mixing the levain into the final dough I mixed the whole wheat and bread flour (for the final dough) together and mixed in the water and let it stand for 5 hours.  It became very soft and creamy.  Then I when the levain was ready I mixed it into the final dough mixture and let

Norm's Onion Rolls Reduex!

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I made Norm's Onion Rolls back in April and wish I had posted them then. That bunch seemed to be a little more aesthetic. These were great tasting and Norm's Onion Rolls, along with Henry's Scones have made me quite popular with the neighborhood.

Burger with Norm' s Onion Roll and Mr. Stripey tomatoes! Delicious!!

New book (to me) The Bread Builders

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I just got my used copy of this book which I had thought of sending to my son in Paso Robles as he is talking of building a clay oven. I thought maybe the brick oven would interest him, but having started to read it I may keep it. Fascinating book with lots of information, but I found one point that confuses me. The author claims that the internal temperature of a loaf should be at least 195*, though 200* is ideal. Then he goes on to say that bread baked to a higher temperature does not keep as well. Here I have been carefully baking to at least 205*! Who should I believe?

Rosh Hashanah Challah

Baking Challah is a weekly thing in my kitchen. I have blogged about it extensively. For the holidays I did something a little "special" inspired by a long ago post by Mariana (I think).

 Rosh Hashanah Challah (yud bet)
Rosh Hashanah Challah (yud bet)

Eliopsomo - Greek Olive Bread

A party with neighbors brought some new inspiration to bake something different. From the book "Savory Baking from the Mediterranean" (Anissa Helou) I picked the recipe for Eliopsomo, or Greek olive bread. The book does not specify baker's percentages or weights, but I used my Dough Calculator to compute those. The conversion for spinach, herbs and olives are guesses and probably not exactly what the author intended. Nevertheless, I doubled the recipe and made two loaves.

Coming out of retirement

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With Christmas and Thanksgiving right around the corner I thought I would start this blog to let everybody on this site know what an old retired Baker with over 25 years experience in the baking industry does for the holidays.  Well this year I'm going to do pretty much the same thing that I do every year which is come out of retirement.  Even though there are only three people in the house my wife my son and myself my home turns into a small commercial bakery.  I literally produce enough products to feed my entire apartment building.  Being that you can only produc

It's been a while

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It's been a while... I have not written anything for a while, or baked anything for a while. It was a combination of work, and also a certain level of frustration with making bread by hand.