Blog posts

In September 2016, I had the opportunity to meet TFL member Derek (yozzause) in Fremantle, Australia. Having developed my baking skills exclusively in Siem Reap, Cambodia, Derek took me to an Italian bakery called "Il Panino" and provided my first, real experience at a proper bakery kitchen.

• Nick, founder and head baker of Il Panino, with his shop assistant

I have been making this mix as muffins for some time now and now that I have an 8" cast iron skillet, I did the whole batter in hot iron. I liked the resulting product better. The single loaf was more moist than the muffins. This is a winner  and new recipe in my baking rotation! Delicious on it's own or as a side for bacon and eggs with home made sausage!

I thought that the Levain does the function of the yeast except the Levain acts more slowly. Why then, when making a hybrid which uses some yeast, does Forkish call for more levain than he calls for in a pure Levain dough?

This is not one of my finest moments. I put too much water in the dough, there probably was too much levain and to top it off, it overproofed in the fridge overnight. I need to redo this one in the near future. 

I was not at all sure what to call this loaf (besides a bit overproofed) because I don’t really know what’s in it.

Well, I know there’s some rye starter, whole wheat flour, unbleached white bread flour, water and salt. That’s it. This was another “let’s just eye ball it” loaf.

To be honest, I’m much happier with how this one turned out than my last try at a “winging it loaf”. I still over proofed it a bit, but not nearly as much as the last one. I also managed to get the consistency of the dough to be a lot less wet and impossible (for me) to handle.

My first blog entry! ;-)

I'v read this recipe http://theryebaker.com/applesauce-buttermilk-rye/ and it hooked me up!

The name isn’t really all it is cracked up to be.  Yes, it has 3 toasted seeds folded into the mix – squash, sunflower and flax.  But is also has 8 different sprouted seeds and at least 2 unsprouted seeds that were ground into flour.  So, this could be called a 13, some sprouted, seed sourdough too.

I've been spending my recent last few months' bakes frequently feasting on a small handful of Mr. Hamelman's formulae.   In general they seem to center around a 125% hydration bread flour based levain, or are modified from IDY to levain, as  my recent take on his potato bread was.  As often as not, I'll use rye instead of bread four.