Blog posts

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!

hey yall, I made some sourdough with rye and its tasty as all get out. I made it with 455g KA bread flour, 195g freshly ground whole rye flour, 130g 100% hydration chef, 486g warm water and 14g of salt.

Evening from sunny Britain..

Here's my second attempt with increased WW (about 15%) and increased hydration:

BP: flour 100%

water 76%

salt 2%

It has been a long time since my first and so far only post, so I just thought to pop up and show how I bake my daily bread these days.

I've got a long rectangular-shaped dutch oven/baking dish, but I usually want to bake two smaller loaves rather than one huge batard, so, sacrificing shape, I put two smaller loaves separated by a small piece of parchment paper into the DO and bake them like that. To make all sides of the loaves brown evenly, you've got to take the separating parchment out when uncovering the DO, but I don't always do that, since the bread is fine either way.