The girls really liked this week’s YW Italian bread we baked using a take in the poolish calzone recipe by replacing the poolish with YW. That will be a tough bread to beat but We though we would give it a go at using nearly the same recipe and replacing the YW with SD this time.
Both these loaves are based on the basic formula and technique from Tartine Bread. The formula for both:
500 grams unbleached white flour
375 grams water
100 grams leaven (100% hydration, white flour)
10 grams salt
From left to right, top to bottom
Here's a yeasted white bread, my basic white loaf bread, I added one cup roasted white onions, 1/4 cup scallions, green parts only sliced thin, one tablespoon parsley, and a half teaspoon dried dill weed.
This recipe makes one standard loaf, put once again I quartered it for four mini boules, two to bake now, two wrapped in plastic for later use.
Proofed, egg washed, scored and saltd
With this kind of salt
Here they are, straight out of the oven
Here's the close up shot
Here's the crumb shot
Baked another Tartine loaf with increased hydration, looking for the perfect crumb (which, of course, can never be achieved!) We had this loaf for lunch with my husband's sister and her husband, Bob the baker from England. They leave today, so we enjoyed lunch outside in the California sun. Bob gave the bread passing marks. They return to Liverpool (and a bit of rain) this afternoon. They did have rain here and in Las Vegas during their visit.
This is a 100% whole wheat sourdough bread with lots of nuts and seeds mixed in (walnuts, almonds, cashews, pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds).
I have recently taken a personal chef type endeavor, not like a gourmet chef, where I show up with wonderful ingredients and fix a 5 course meal. It's more of a I show up in your kitchen and fix dinner out of whatever I find in your kitchen. It's a hey everybody, grandma's going to come and fix us dinner kind of a thing.
Having benefited from the collective wisdom of other Fresh Loafers for a while, I thought it was time to make a contribution. This bread is a sourdough adaptation of a straight-dough whole-wheat multigrain loaf with honey and dried malt that my much-loved late father-in-law used to make with a bread machine.
Okay, I couldn't resist, I know its corny.
I've now baked twice the Black Hamster Bread recipe from Ketex, to me this is a Schwarzbrot or black bread.
The first attempt was problematic -
Too much yeast, this coupled with the starter and the bread began rising too quickly
Hydration level was way overboard - as I cut into the bread the knife had streams (yuck!)
I wasn't happy with the high/fast bake time, I felt this contributed to the wet doughy first trial
It seems ever since Sylvia posted her fine calzones we haven’t had pizza night but have calzone night instead. We like both my daughter loves seasoned ricotta and that is a calzone ingredient if there ever was one. You could say that our calzones are a cross between lasagna and pizza.
A little over a year ago, I read on this site (here) about PiPs' wonderful find of a Raadvad Danish bread slicer. I saw that post and was filled with envy. Of course, I immediately searched online for one. A few were available on some auction sites, but for very high prices (and most won't ship internationally, either).
After years of gawking at some croissant-centric blogs (*ahem* txfarmer's and weekendbakery), I decided to conquer, once and for all, my biggest fear in all of baking. I've been using weekend bakery's recipe, and for the most part, it has been great. 1st attempt was a success, 2nd was a disaster, and 3rd was pretty good again. My biggest problem, however, is trying to get consistent and even honeycomb structure with each croissant. Seems like I would only get 2-3 perfect croissant per batch. Any tips/pointers would be greatly appreciated!
