Blog posts

SIP (shelter in place) causes me to very regularly make SIP (Sourdough In Place). All this possible thanks to my local baker "The Midwife and the Baker" which sells high quality bread flour and hard white and hard red wheat flour (nothing to be had for even typical low quality store flours in any store for weeks).

Practice makes perfect, and they're turning out better each time.

Ive tried 3, 4 times to make croissants, still fails after changing multiple way of making it, in needs of some suggestion for my failed experience, my husband couldn't believe how hard it is, because every bakery sells them, so if they are really so hard to make, then crossants will be a delicacy can sell hundreds for one, which I refuse to believe!

This is the recipe for my dough

1kg flour

150g Sugar

20g salt

20g milk powder

100g butter

2 eggs

50g yeast

450g water/milk

I think I used to underproof my loaves (you can see my old posts somewhere). I was too afraid of overproofing and wasn't really sure what to look for in the poke test.

Very slowly trying to make progress on baguettes.

Besides the excellent advice of alfanso, I have found Hamelman's video on baguette shaping helpful. Practicing these has made me a lot more aware of the benefits of a good preshape.

I used my posted Classic Sourdough recipe and added two large chopped jalapeños and 200 grams of cubed extra sharp Tillamook cheddar - made two nice big yummy loaves. 

This bread was a challenge! My flour felt thirsty at the beginning, so I think the hydration was bumped up to about 83% and easily the highest hydration, mostly white flour bread I've worked with. Bulk fermentation was much quicker than usual and I overproofed it by a bit. Even with a generous dusting of rice flour, it still stuck to the banneton quite a bit. 

Despite all of those challenges, I'm really happy with the taste of this bread. I'm going back to basics for the next bake, so I can get more practice at a hydration level I'm more comfortable with. 

Cheers!

Today I tried Maurizio's take on the Tartine recipe today, using bolted Warthog Flour as the whole wheat and Barton Springs 00 for the remainder.  I let it proof at room temperature and then baked.  I definitely got a denser loaf than I was expecting, with the larger air pockets accumulating near the top.  I was a bit disappointed with the flatter loaf, and am not sure if it's due to the mix of flours or my shaping--I'm always a bit concerned that I don't get the ball formed tight enough

Gyro sandwich on Ligurian focaccia

There has been a whole lot of therapeutic baking and therapeutic bread consumption during this quarantine.  Here are a couple of them...

 Pepperoni, artichoke, roasted red pepper, and olive pizza

 Challah topped with poppy seeds

Hi everyone, 

I need some help with my starter. I started it on the 29/04 so it's only a few days old. It is my first ever try, I didn't have distilled water and I'm not even sure if the flour I'm using is unbleached. I used the recommended mixture by Joshua Weissman on YouTube for the first mix and a few of the first feedings, this was:

Day 1: 100g wholemeal flour (I didn't have rye) and 150g lukewarm water

I then fed it every 24hrs