Blog posts

This is my third attempt of the Pain Au Levain formula from Peter Reinhart's new book "Bread Revolution".

The first 2 did not come out correctly.  I now suspect the main culprit was that I did not dry out the sprouted winter wheat berries enough and the flour was too moist.  This time I let it dry out using a fan for a day and half and the bread came out much better.

Cari amici,

quest'anno nell'attesa di iniziare a produrre i regali e le dolcezze da donare, per le festività ormai prossime, mi sono regalata un nuovo Corso di Pasticceria che prevedeva alcuni prodotti tipicamente Natalizi qui in Italia.

Io ne sono rimasta entusiasta ......se la cosa vi incuriosisce e può esservi di spunto per le vostre produzioni, date un'occhiata qui sotto e fatemi sapere cosa ne pensate:

Thank you Hanseata for the croissant recipe & instructions - they turned out wonderfully even in Hawaii's 80 degree weather!

Hi! I just got a copy of "Tartine" (it might be a little outdated, but what the hell). Anyway, this is the first attempt at the basic country loaf recipe. I think the crimb should be more open, at least according to the pictures, but I still liked it very much.

Baked my seeded SD loaf again this weekend. Decreased hydration, still slow activity during bulk fermentation. But got a bit more oven spring than last week.

taste is fantastic as previously using BF, WW heritage and rye. 3 seeds sesame, poppy n sunflower.

After two years of trying (and failing) to make various sourdough starters I have finally succeeded!  I used Maggie Glezer's firm sourdough starter (from zolablue's post).  I started in September and it was a little slow, then a family member got very sick so I just put it in the refrigerator for probably 5 weeks before getting it going about 10 days ago.  I managed to get it to double, then treble in size in 24 hours but remained frustrated that I couldn't do it in 8 hours.

Quite airy and evenly sized pockets dotted with added sunflwr sesame and walnuts..

Where i live daily temps exceed 32 celsius. Working with dough is a challenge. I hv followed ur site for quite a while and felt its time to begin sharing...

Took mths and mths to figure out what goes on with flour yeast and water and their interaction with so many other variables. I now hv my fav method which seems to work quite often tho not always.

Today i share with you my kitchen offerings- a seeded  loaf made with one third rye, seeds and nuts and sourdough.

Hoping that others in the tropics may find this useful.

I have been experimenting with different flours, different bulk fermentations, cold vs room temperature proofs, shaping, banneton vs. no banneton, etc. to see how the various changes would make a difference in the final bread.  I also tried different scoring patterns.  I really had fun.  I used combinations of AP flour, WW flour, rye, spelt and bread flour for the different breads. Most of the time, I used a variation of Classic Sourdough recipe below, often adding more ww, rye and spelt; one time I made five grain levain loaves with the soaker.

I used the start of Nicole Hunn’s  “No-Rye Rye Bread” for this recipe, but altered it quite a bit.  Gluten-free bread is frustrating, but I really wanted to make a sourdough loaf that improved on my last effort.

I made a sourdough starter from gluten-free flour and kept it in the refrigerator.  I used Nicole’s recipe, but it is confusing and complicated, so when I refreshed it, I just used gluten-free oat and tapioca flours the first time and buckwheat and brown rice flours the second time.  It perked up very well.