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Yesterday I made a from-scratch deep dish pizza using the recipe in The Great Chicago Pizza Cookbook. The crust turned out beautifully, or so I thought until I tried to cut it. It wasn't burnt, but was hard as a rock! We had to saw through it and it was just too much chewy to enjoy the rest of the ingredients. 

Does anyone have any suggestions? The recipe calls for 1/2 c of yellow cornmeal and I wasn't sure if that was the issue or if I should forego par baking or what? There are photos below. Any and all advice welcome!!! 

Today I baked up some levain boules and a Tartine Country Loaf.  I can't shake this sourdough kick since returning from San Francisco.  I tweaked my roaster/steaming method a bit to enhance the Tartine crust caramelization.  I am very happy with the results.  The adjustments to the steaming method really made the crust thin and crispy, and added a more complex flavour.

The combination of dreary weather foiling my landscape photography and a new camera resulted in a post bake shutterbug frenzy. 

Another batch of Pane Maggiore. This time with no intention I made another change. i built the levains (1/2 rye sour stiff/1/2 white wheat liquid) and got exhausted by mix time so i retarded them to finish the following day. I decreased my total pre fermented flour in the recipe to about 15% as this dough gets very active and this would give the time for folds in accordance with ferment times. 1 hour autolyse followed by a soft finished mix. Then three sets of folds at 50 minute intervals and divided at the 3 hour mark.

I have been skiing five days a week now for a while, so not much time to browse TFL. My baking thoughts have turned from bread to sweets. this is a three layer orange chiffon cake from ITJB, filled with apricot jam and chocolate butter cream and iced with the same chocolate. The chocolate didn't adhere to the orange slices, so I painted around them. YUMM!

I made the Tartine country loaf on two separate occasions and both didn't turn out right. Maybe the Tartine country loaf was an overly ambitious first try at a bread made with a starter? Before making my first Tartine country loaf, I had never made nor maintained a starter before nor had I ever made a leaven. But I followed all the directions laid out in the Tartine Bread book. When my starter was rising and falling predictably, I made the leaven. I tested the leaven and it floated so I guessed it was ready to use.

I wanted to try a seeded sourdough with a flax seed soaker, so i found the recipe below.  I made a number of variations along the way, due to preference and timing.  I noted the changes I made at the right of the original recipe.I wanted more of a whole wheat loaf, so I changed the recipe to add much more whole wheat and used a whole wheat starter. My husband and I really enjoyed the result.  It was crusty, but chewy, and the seeds inside really added a lot of tangy taste to the loaf.

Pane Valle Maggia, ver. 2

March 7 , 2014

Last month, I made Pane Valle Maggia, inspired by Josh's “Pain Maggiore.” It was a very good bread, but I wanted to make it again using freshly milled whole wheat flour. Also, I thought it would be improved by pre-fermenting the rye component. So, I made both changes for today's bake. The Total Dough ingredients were basically unchanged.