Blog posts

I'm upping the ante to two bakes a week.  One to trade at market and one to sell and raise money for more ingredients/pay bills while I try to find my own "spot".  I figured I must give this formula its due and remake with proper hydration.  I made one other change based on the flavor profile of the "botched" batch and split the whole wheat half Hard Red Winter and half Hard White Winter.  I also added a longer autolyse.  The previous loaf was a fine sammi bread but it had a bitter finish and these changes were to help that aspect.

Lucy has wanted to make some of these fine rolls ever since she saw them here 

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/38178/sacaduros

But ours didn’t open up like they were supposed to at the folds over the chunk of butter  You are supposed to use a lower hydration sort of white hearth bread for these rolls but we used our recent 8 whole grain mix using the 85% extraction for the dough flour.

Looking for a seasonal specialty for my customers at A&B Naturals, I came upon an Italian Christmas bread, Pinza, that, after crossing the border to Austria, switched holidays - and turned into Easter bread, Pinze.

After a solemn blessing in the church, this lovely Styrian Easter bread (often adorned by a red egg, and cut three times, to symbolize the Holy Trinity) is served with the meat on Easter Sunday.

I have had lots of fun tinkering with this recipe.  Today, I reduced the rye content again, added flax seeds and sprinkled in some sesame seeds.  Still working on my shaping, but the bread was tasty.  My husband really liked it. .

I am coming "home" for the first time since 1990 along with family, and we are hoping to spend a few days in Devon - we lived in Ideford before coming to America. I am hoping some of our English TFL members might be able to recommend a vacation cottage we could rent as a center to explore Devon. There will be five of us, three adults and two teenaged girls, and while I don't mind sharing a room with the girls this old Nana thinks two bathrooms would be nice.  Looking forward to clotted cream, pork pies - and any bakery suggestions would be lovely, A.

This is my version of Pain de Campagne.  It took three attempts before I was satisfied with the result.  The first two loaves were too sour for my liking.  It was only when Josh suggested that I use more starter in my levain build, instead of less, that I finally got the result I wanted.  :)

Levain

A couple months ago I took a Viennoserie class at the San Francisco Baking Institute (SFBI). The students were mostly home baking hobbyists like me, but there were a few professionals too. Most of the 40 hours were spent hands-on in the pastry kitchen. The high quality of instruction combined with the excellent equipment and facilities were totally worth the tuition. The curriculum was designed with a professional production environment in mind so each batch of dough was in the 5-6 kg range and were mixed in large stand mixers. All the lamination was done using a dough sheeter.

It's Frisbee Time

Lucy was so disappointed that the dough stuck to the new basket she decided a re-do was in order since we had the same powerful levain, fierce really, the same flour mixes and nothing but time on our hands