An Amateur's Amateur
Hi to all at this great website
My name is Jonty, and I am a college student too enamored with baking to waste time on my first ever blog on some other topic (ie: indie music, saving the world, angsty stuff).
To introduce myself to anyone who will read this (even if it is only ever me), I got into bread baking (I've been doing other types of baking with chemical leaveners for a while) from watching/reading a great anime/manga called Yakitate! Japan [1] (of which I've found a couple of mentions [2] on this site). I was inspired and eventually decided to give yeasted breads a try.
The first bread I ever tried was actually Erithid's Microwave Bread [3] recipe that was inspired from Yakitate, and it turned out nicely (I'm still planning on trying to give it some filling in the future).
Then, I made the leap and made the Lesson 2 Bread [4], skipping Lesson 1 because I wanted a sandwich bread (of course, I ended up just eating the bread and not making any sandwiches. Such is life).
After, I made an even bigger jump and decided to try Bagels [5], using some freshly-bought KA Bread Flour. I made only a half-batch because of my tiny little cookie sheet. I ended up with three pretty good cinnamon-brown sugar bagels (though I think they could have used a bit more of each flavor addition) and three okay garlic-sesame bagels (I now know that bagels should probably be topped with already roasted garlic and not raw after having consumed a couple of fairly sour bagels). This will definitely be in my future again.
Presently, I have taken an even bigger leap to Floyd's ciabatta [6]; it is now sitting on my kitchen counter on its final rise. I realize now that I may have had a little too much confidence as my dough ended up a bit lumpy (I think my autolyse was too dry). Also, I let my poolish sit for quite a while (something like 10-12 hours) because I got bored yesterday afternoon and decided to just make it. I'm not sure if letting a poolish ferment for that long is good or bad, but my dough kind of smells uncomfortably sour. We shall see, I suppose.
Future plans? I definitely want to give Pain Aux Raisins and Cream Cheese Snails [7] a try, as well as Cranberry-Chocolate Sweet Buns [8], and Steamed Buns [9]. Maybe I'll even try a challah or (gasp) my own sourdough starter? Well, sourdough is perhaps a bit far away from my reach, but I plan on being a diligent student for a while.