Blog posts

Sending this to Yeastspotting.

Click here for my blog index.

This week among other things baked... together we baked Polenta pepita breads...Helen did not put rosemary in ours... Barb used a recipe that had it and used it.

Helen and I made recipe pretty straight to the script... Barb, creative thinker that she is... added brown sugar candied bacon crumbles, along with the pumpkin seeds and rosemary... she said the rosemary was a little overpowering the first day... but this morning, that rosemary had mellowed and the bacon had taken the stage.

Sounds like a very good for Barb. As you can see it is a great looking bread.

This loaf was made using a modified re-mixed straight dough process, which was adapted from the "ful-flavor process", which dates back to 1959. The formula for this bread is fairly standard:

Hello everybody! I managed today to post this bilingual article in my Romanian blog. It features one of my favorite breads. I first baked this some months ago, when I discovered the spice "mahlab" in a spice shop and since then I have baked it over and over again. All the people who tasted it got very enthusiastic about it, despite the fact that it didn't taste like "normal bread" (because of it's mahlab scent).

We have been working our way up to higher and higher percent whole grains using sourdough and trying to get an open crumb. So far 30 percent – no worries but Lucy can only eat so much white bread sourdough before she starts feeling guilty.

My first bash at the "Tartine Style Loaf" from the weekendbakery.com site.

This is an adapted recipe tweaked for European flour with 70% hydration.  For added depth of flavour I used a rye starter here.  Recipe and method very simple to follow.  No kneading required just a short autolyse and a series of 6 stretch and folds interspaced by 30min intervals.

It is very exciting.  I have always wanted to bake a Tartine loaf and now I have done it. There certainly were trials along the way.  I weighed out the ingredients and just felt it was too much water.  The dough hydration seemed high, so I had to add some flour during the turn-and-folds.  It seemed to work out OK in the end.  I also did more turn-and-folds to get the dough to where I thought it would work. I am very anxious to see the crumb.

This is my second take on Andy’s (ananda) Borodinsky Rye. My Last attempt yielded a fine bread, but lacked volume to fill the pan, and was somewhat over-hydrated. This time, I've lined my Pullman pan with parchment paper, reduced the hydration of the rye dough, slid the pan cover on, and baked with steam throughout the 4.5 hours baking time at 100C (The oven was preheated to 250C).

A while ago I needed to add another book from my Amazon wish list to qualify for free shipping. More or less randomly, I picked Ken Forkish's: "Flour, Water, Salt, Yeast" - the price was right!