Blog posts

Hello, I tried making Chive Blossom Bread this week.
A lucky venture to the local mill yielded a new-to-me flour product: purple wheat flour (sold as Anthograin).
Purple chive blossoms and purple flour are combined in this bread, with no resulting purple color in the finished bread whatsoever :^)

The baked breads (I tried scoring chives on one loaf and stencilled chives on another; the loaves at the front were scored to make them look like chive blossoms (the little one was snipped with scissors) – didn’t really turn out like I’d hoped!):

The LA Times is running a monthly Master Class series with this month featuring Nancy Silverton, a video, and her formula for basic focaccia dough along with savory recipes.  Great opportunity to watch a "Master Chef" in action:

We recently got very lucky and were able to buy a flat of the best peaches we have ever had. These peaches, just picked, ripened on the tree, are pure peachy goodness. At the same time, I’ve been experimenting with water/fruit fed yeast in bread baking. As a result of this experimentation I’ve discovered that it is next to impossible to get any fruit flavor from Yeast Water to be present in any baked bread. The water from the fruited yeast is just too subtle. Yes, the fruited yeast water has a nice effect on the crust (crunchy), crumb (moist and tender) and on the color (esp.

I came across the famous Tartine Morning Buns when I was searching for croissant images of Tartine Bakery (as I was on my mission to perfect the croissant making, I figured I should look up to the best:))

I just thought I would share a little video a friend of mine did for a class project.  This is my Bakery out of the basement of my home.  Please note, I am a BAKER not an ACTOR!

http://youtu.be/SIk5_MsYuac

I was browsing through Saveur's online magazine the other day and ran across a recipe for a tomato and cheese pie from Sicily called Scaccia. The recipe can be found at the link below.

http://www.saveur.com/article/Recipes/Tomato-and-Cheese-Pie

    I really enjoy baking artisan loaves, but I decided that if I wanted test the results of changes in my breads, the artisan loaf was a poor choice. I wanted something where each loaf could be compared with the other test loaves - primarily based upon photo records and detailed method writeups on my part.

 For a while I used Flo Makanai's 123 formulation: 

Wanted to share a sonewhat strange experiment with you!

I was refreshing my rye starter from the fridge, so kept 75g and refreshed (back in the fridge after a while) and decided to boost what was left with some white flour and water to build into a baking levain.  I knew I could only do one small loaf, but the starter seemed so lively, I thought "Why not use all of this?"

Dubious recipe:
53og rye & white starter 100% hydration (roughly)
200g flour
50g warm water
8g salt
(to get to around 68% hydration I think)