TeaIV's blog

I call this bread the Super-Soaker because I soaked every type of flour I had for a long time (a day and a half, with about a day in the fridge). the taste was superb, as was the crumb.

By the way, how's my new granite ;)?

I added about a tsp. of sugar to the soaker. at first, it tasted like cream of wheat. after the day and a half that it was soaking for, there was some apparent hooch on top, and it had a very good, distinguished taste. I also did a cold proof.

the second picture isn't much of a looker, but oh well.

comments and suggestions would be welcome,

TeaIV

I decided to try out my new SD starter and see if it's healthy and working and all. I'm pretty sure it's in good shape. I added it to the ciabbatas I made for a friend of mine, and it made the crumb and taste really extraordinary. Not only that, but I think I've finally mastered the steam technique. this bread had the ultimate crackly crust. it literally cracked when I cut it in half. This is definitely one of the better breads I've made.

P.S. you can see the starter in the background, it's in the container with the red lid :) .

TeaIV

I made Pizza on Sunday, and had about a pound of grated cheese left. we also had potatoes, so I decided to combine the two!

the combination was very pleasing! I had a preferment going for 20 hours, about 10 of them in the fridge. I made the dough with 2 or 3 mashed potatoes. I cut off individual pieces, then flattened them, put the cheese on the middle, and rolled them up. In the end, they had a hole in the middle, with a layer of cheese in the middle. their texture was very good, I added about a tbs of olive oil and milk each as well, which might have helped. I think the potatoes and cheese mixed well. Sorry for the bad pictures!

P.S. made my first successful Ciabatta! (successful as in an open crumb). I used this recipe: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/2984/jasons-quick-coccodrillo-ciabatta-bread.

this bread is called pane di prato (I think, I made it a long time ago). it's saltless bread that is apparently traditionally tuscan. The book I used said that when the venetians ruled the salt monopoly, the tuscans made bread without salt as to not give into the monopoly. it's an acquired taste in my opinion... but it was still good.

the next one is the anis bouabsa baguettes that I made. sorry for the blurry picture, but I think you can still tell how open the crumb was. due to bad scoring on my part, they had a funny shape, they looked like weights.

this is floyd's cream cheese blueberry braid, but I used pears and almonds:

I purchased some rye flour recently, and started trying things out with it. it's quickly becoming one of my favorite flours to use.

this one is eric's favorite rye. you can't tell it from the picture, but it had a REALLY nice, medium, fluffy crumb, and really good oven spring. it was just a resounding success, and one of my family's favorites.

with the left over starter from that bread, I made some marbled rye bread. I had maybe 1/2 c. left, so it wasn't sour. this bread amazed me. It looked kind of wierd on the outside (I need to practice my scoring :( ) but it was great in every other department. I was surprised, because I didn't use a recipe... just kind of improvised, and I think the crumb was that open because I left the starter in the fridge for about 3 or 4 days after I made the last rye bread.

last, but definitely not least:

I made Italian bread, using Floyd's recipe, but I added some rye flour to it (and the preferment was also 50% rye). It was simply delicious, even better then the regular italian bread. I also think that this is the best looking bread I've made yet. one of my personal favorites.

on that note, I would like to thank you, TFL, for all of your help, recipes, advise, and discussion! :)

thanks, guys!

well, I didn't have internet access for a couple of days, so I didn't use any recipe like I usually do. I was going to make a whole-wheat loaf with a soaker (which I decided to leave out on the counter overnight) and a cold proof. then, I noticed that we had some roasted pine-nuts left, which are amazingly delicious. I decided to add them into the dough. I kept worrying because I thought leaving the soaker overnight would be too long, even though I heard Peter Reinhart talk about doing that in some video I watched... anyways, In the morning, I couldn't just stick the nuts, yeast , and olive oil in the bowel and mix it all together, so I just tried to knead it into the soaker.

(sorry for the blurry pictures)

the crumb was really airy compared to most breads that I make, but what was REALLY surprising is that the bread itself tasted like roasted pine nuts!!! It was amazingly delicious! I think this happened because when I was kneading the nuts into the dough, I probably squeezed them, and released the oils in the nuts (of which there is quite a bit if you ever ate them) into the dough. It was simply amazing. If you like pine nuts, you MUST try this! If you've never tried them, I certainly think you should.

this is my first Sourdough: (san fran SD, i think it was pretty good for a first time). All of the sourdough things that I baked I used with the starter that I grew with Sourdo Lady's recipe, using dulled lemon juice.

sorry for the blurry image...

This is my first Pizza... very Garlicky Pesto (home-made) with moz cheese, mushrooms and pine nuts. oh, and a cheese-filled crust! I love those! sadly this is taken pre-bake. It didn't last long enough to take a picture of it when it was ready. we were hungry that day...

and last but not least, My Sourdough Pizza. all I can say is it was Amazing... best pizza dough I've ever tasted... the toppings could have been better, but oh well. cheese filled crust again. this time I insisted that I take several pictures, but someone's hungry fingers were running towards the pizza already. both of these were using the pizza primer recipe on this site.

I made baguettes with poolish using one of the recipes on this site, and It was delightful!! my family all agreed that this was some of the best bread I've made!

compare to my first try with baguettes:

Way better!