Blog posts

My basic wheat flour starter (known affectionately as Golfedan) has been doing some nice work recently and I guess it's finally decent enough to share here. I just baked these two today. I started off with a poolish to which I added everything else the next day. Here's the breakdown.

Poolish:

50g starter + 175g water + 175g bread flour (to create a basic 200-200 poolish)

I let that sit at room temperature for about 13-14 hours until it was quite bubbly on top and able to float.

Dough:

 Hello everyone on TFL.. Today I'm very happy and proud of my brother Adam, he asked me last week if I could show him how to make a loaf of bread start to finish on his day off (being today ) . I jumped at the occasion that my brother wanted me to teach him something so beautiful in its self the patience of bread baking... We made a Tartine "Country Loaf" from the book "Tartine Bread" . I walked him through the steps and he was very excited at the progress of the dough.

If you have never made a bread with cream cheese yet, I urge you to give it a try.  The cream cheese really turns out a moist and creamy crumb.

The addition to the smashed potatoes with the durum and Kamut flours resulted in a moist, flavorful bread with a moderately open crumb.  This one is perfect for grilled bread, panninis, and simply with some olive oil or butter.

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.