Blog posts

 Some years ago, I remember seeing tables lined up in a shopping Mall here in Dubai, where locally homemade Artisan crafts are displayed for sale. For months now, I have been planning on taking my home baking a step further, and the idea of selling bread to public was brewing slowly in my mind. So, I looked up for information on the Crafts Market, and found that “ARTE” or Arts and Crafts Market run a once in a month exhibition, were only locally handmade art work and craft items are featured by local Artisans.

It seems everyone is enjoying cheesy bread's lately and with Ian's last post on Calzone and watching 'Diner's Drive Inns and Dives' hosting an old favorite diner of mine and it's Calzone's.  It has certainly put me in the mood for one.   

Mike had taken Saturday off from work to do a mountain bike race and neighbors were all home.  So I was make K.Forkish's levain pizza's for everyone.

Before making the pizza's.

 When my husband and i were in England for the holidays, I brought my sourdough starter with me.

Member Omid posted an excellent and very comprehensive blog on Iranian Barbari bread which can be viewed here if you haven't seen it:

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/36357/persianiranian-barbari-bread

The result is a wonderfully subtle bread with slightly nutty undertones and a structure not too dissimilar to french baguette.  End to end I was surprised at just how simple these were to make.  They are well worth a go.

Recipe

My wife requested an Italian style bread to go with her lasagna for this weekends belated holiday dinner with my family.  I couldn't just make a simple Italian bread of course, so I made a new version of an older formula I posted about early last year.  This is loosely based on Peter Reinhart's Italian bread from BBA where he uses a biga which I replaced with a durum based starter.  I also used some freshly milled white hard wheat, freshly milled spelt and rye flours along with KAF French style and Durum.

I had a request to make crusty sourdough rolls when my husband and I were visiting family in England for the holidays.  I brought along my sourdough starter in checked luggage (TSA searched it), but the "baby" white and rye sourdough starters came through very well.  In fact, they performed better than the "mother" sourdough starters back in the U.S.

…based upon a formula by Francesco Favorito.

Oh my. These are some damn fine tasting doughnuts, easily the best I have ever eaten, seriously!

Lucy decided to help the girls out with their white bread fix by making another one, a SD one this time, for them to gnaw on   To make the bread a little moiré healthy, we also added in some whole, rye, spelt and wheat.  TO increase the flavor we added in our favorite taste enhancers (that aren’t Toadies), 10 g each of corn, potato and steel cut oat and a bit of farina.

 I've been wanting to try the Ken Forkish style pizza dough ever since David Snyder on TFL posted about his great love for this formula and procedure here.  David changed some of the timing in the recipe to achieve the ultimate results.  I followed his directions pretty closely with the only thing I changed being I used my mixer on low speed for the initial mix and used some fresh milled white hard wheat flour in place of the WW he used.

We spent the holidays with my husband's family in England.  We haven't been able to do that many times over the years, so it was very nice.  I brought my sourdough starter with me, white and rye.  I put it in checked baggage; TSA searched the bag, but the starter came through very well.  It started up very easily, and I baked many things while we were over.  I'll try and share some of them.  It was fun to be able to bake over the holidays while we there!