Blog posts

The Xmas bread (but also festivals) of Lake Como.

Mataloc is also offered as a dessert………with a bit of mascarpone

This is what we want!!

This bread is chocca block with goodies and not so much butter that its too rich.

Very similar to panettone but the taste is a little different.

This bread needs a serious warning!!

Seriously addictive….

I'm continuing with the theme of 'corn' this week. This time, I'm starting with a 50/50 mix of Heartland Mill's organic blue and yellow corn. It took me a little time to get the mill dialed in for the coarseness I was after -- and I ended up sifting out roughly 50% of the meal, leaving me with true grits (and a bunch of corn flour for my next loaf of bread).

I wanted to make a bread to bring into my new office and my wife had just cooked some bacon for our grilled cheese with bacon sandwiches so naturally I needed to use the left-overs in a bread.  I started out with the Italian Country Bread from Peter Reinhart's BBA book and changed most of the ingredients while adding a few additional as well.

Now this beauty LOOKS complex but I promise it’s not.

A little time is needed but you can come and go in between , so are you ready?

Gorgeous!!

Jam packed with fruit, nuts, rum and spices, it is delicious.

A wonderful combination of bread dough spiked with liquers….Not too buttery and yet still moist with a gorgeous flaky like crust.

This is another take on a multi-grain bake we did not s long ago that you can find here;

60% Whole Grain SD / YW Bread With Caraway, Rye Chops, Coffee and Cocoa

After a couple of weeks of nurturing a new starter and studying the Tartine book, I felt I was ready to give this formula a try. As I've never made something this wet and sticky before, I feel I did an OK job with it. The taste is amazing!!  I was happy with the color of the crust and the crumb is not too bad. It could be a bit more open, but that is my fault as I had some issues with the loaves sticking to the paper as I went to slide them into the cooker to bake, deflating them a bit.

I am not a baker. I am a chef, and therefore I got my own ideas how food can work.

I wanted a cinnamon bagel fine crumb with a nice tough crust. No egg, butter, milk or oil.

Right I did do a little research about lye, baking soda, potato water, blanching, rolling and oven temperature

Make potato water:

• 180 gr nice golden potato can be any like annabel or agria
• 1 ltr water

cook the potato, no salt. cool down and blend

make a starter by mixing:

But you might cry and these are simply soooooooo yum, words escape me.

Mmmmm

I have been twiddling round with sweet doughs and Chelsea bun typey things for years..

This is my favourite…

As you can imagine,  these went…

Seriously, I turn around and GONE!!

Caramely swirly

Several days ago I happened upon a disconcerting video about wheat. The audio-based video consisted of a one-hour interview with Dr. William Davis, author of the book Wheat Belly and a renown cardiologist who claims that the habitual consumption of wheat-based products is unhealthy.

Saturday was pickup day for Pioneer Valley's grain CSA. I am really impressed with the variety and quality of the grains and beans we got. I'll do a more extensive post on what we got later, but here's the first cooking effort. I used the same recipe from my blue corn cornbread entry, using Red Llamas Wheat and Mandan Bride Corn.