Blog posts

The Fresh Loaf is on a new server now. Hopefully you'll all find your way here and the new server performs just as well as the old one.

Nothing significant changed from a user's perspective. The server is running Ubuntu 20.04 LTS instead of Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. The versions of PHP, MariaDB, and some of the other tools have been upgraded accordingly.

This paves the way for a site software upgrade in the hopefully not-too-distant future, but that is a bigger undertaking.

Please let me know if you notice any problems that might be related to the move.

This loaf is a complete game changer for me. This is my first (nearly) 100% whole wheat loaf (I think!) that I have found to be delicious. I'm generally an aspirational high-percentage whole wheater - I'll often make high percent whole wheat loaves wanting to enjoy them, but ultimately finding them overpowering in flavor and sourness.

Heads up that an upgrade to the server TFL runs on is coming up soon. It's actually a migration to a new machine, not an in place upgrade. That's a safer approach because if anything goes wrong I can bail out and leave the site and server as they are right now.

I'm hoping to take care of it tomorrow late afternoon Pacific time but it might not happen until later in the week. I'll post another announcement an hour or so before I start.

Inspired by Benny's red fife bakes, and an earlier red fife by @suminandi that caught my eye, I wanted to see what I could learn from working with this flavorful but fermentation intolerant heritage grain.  I'll be doing a few bakes with this one using desem at different percentages of PFF.

Had a quick bake today testing a recipe for a friend that was in her breadmaker  booklet,  it came out rather nice but i did tell her hers wont come out looking the same.

The Garlic and Herb dough placed into the cold Sassafras and washed with cornflour paste

The poppy and sesame seed applied

I stopped by the Grow NY grain stand at the local farmers market and picked up the lone bag of Frederick soft white wheat berries they had and a few bags of stone-ground flour from Farmer Ground and Small Valley Farm so I could sample some local wheat varieties and try a few bakes with professionally milled whole grain flour for comparison with Mockmilled flour.  Larger bags of wheat berries can be ordered for pick up in advance.  I am interested in the Renan flour, but a 50 lb minimum is a bit intimidating.  If someone in the NYC area is interested in splitting an order plea

These were a huge hit the last time I made these. However, I forgot that this dough is very loose. When doing a single set of coil folds, keep at it until the dough tightens up. For example, it took 4 rotations of 90 degrees each to get the dough to firm up on most sets of coil folds. 

I also did another coil fold just before dividing to give the dough a bit more structure. 

Recipe

Makes 3 loaves

Add ins:

150 g Sardo Olive Bruschetta, undrained 

100 g Sardo Sweet Pepper Bruschetta, undrained

Main dough:

I've been jonesing for a rye bread, so when my most recent bread (a yeasted 100% whole wheat bread with tangzhong) developed mold before the loaf was half-eaten, I seized the opportunity. 

This is my first time making a porridge bread. They always looked more challenging than I was ready to tackle. After reading the entire previous CB that featured this bread (read it several times, lol), I decided to go ahead and give it a try.

Levain:

75 gm, half bread flour, half WW, 100% hydration (9 gm seed culture)

Oat soaker:

125 gm oats (home flaked)

250 gm h2o

Pinch of salt

Dough:

350 gm bread flour

Hi all, new to posting here but have often scoured this site for good information. I've been working on making a good panettone for years now and am finally getting good results and finding consistency so I thought I'd share. I follow the traditional process, using a lievto madre, 3 short refreshments during the day before mixing the first dough at night and then I mix the second dough the next morning. 48 hours or so from start to the first slice.