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xaipete made me do it. The crust was OK., "nothing extry" as we say in Alabama.  It was a wild yeast dough that had been in the freezer for a couple months. It was very nice to work with but didn't rise too much . It did get nice and chewy and since I baked in a 550 oven with a really preheated stone the bottom was nicely browned in places. The topping was what made it so perfect. My sister in law brought me olive salad from NOLA. It is the best and since that was my home long ago I miss it and was so glad to get the gift. Added Itl sausage, sundried tomatoes from Whole Foods in NYC , fresh mozz and parma. YUM !!!

I always like the positive approach. If have been able to progress with sourdough, the starter is really developing nicely. Last week I made my first sourdough from this starter, also somes pain ancienne. You can see that the crumb of the ancienne looks nicer (left), but the sourdough has more taste.

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Today I made another sourdough, but used a flour called 'grobbe' to make the final dough. According to the label from the mill it contains: rye, line seed, corn and a few other things I cannot find the translations for. I basically followed the recipe for the Oregon Trail (The Doctor's Sourdough Bread). Happy with the result, the family judgement will be tomorrow at a birthday party!

This bread really asks for a lot of attention, but it is well worth it. Keep on baking!

Cheers,
Jw.

OK, so I know it sounds like an oxymoron, but it works! Baguette dough is one of my favorite pizza doughs because it is easy to handle, has just a hint of sweetness, and bakes up as a sturdy, crisp, and thin platform (no sagging) that works no matter whether the topping be light or heavy. I baked this in the oven on my new stone (I didn't want to risk repeating last Friday's BBQed-beyond-all-recognition pizza). I had planned to top it with some pesto and fresh basil, but the pesto had molded and the basil, shriveled, so I just went with sauce and fresh mozzarella.

--Pamela

Summary of This Months Breads - The Obsession Begins.
Composed in terrible quality cell phone pictures (I am currently without a camera!)

I found this website about a month ago, while home sick and craving whole wheat pitas. I loved the blog style recipes - I always want more pictures - and I was greatly encouraged by my success with the pitas. I have been baking my whole life, but I have never had much success with yeast. I just never seemed to be able to get the timing down correctly, and things kept coming out flat. Once I found this site, I became immediatly obsessed with the challenge of sourdough and the beautiful loafs that were strewn everywhere. (As an aside, I cook and bake compulsively, as stress relief, and the college application process is certainly a stressful time!) Almost every weekend this month, I have tried a new recipe from the site and have had increadibly satisfying results. I have learned so much about bread, and hopefully my luck will continue to hold out. In general I have trouble sticking straight to recipes, and I do alot of improvising when I bake and take copious notes about the results. Just goes to show how chemistry is the perfect major choice for me.

The breads:
My first sourdough! I used a whole wheat starter with SourdoLady's blog as a guide, although I used grapefruit juice innitially rather than pineapple. My sisters said they could almost taste the grapefruit in the bread - it had a strong sourdough taste. Even more than what I was expecting. The bread is made with Deluxe Sourdough Bread Recipe, also from SourdoLady.

A buttermilk cluster - A new favorite!
I used a little less four than called for, and added a bit of whole wheat and maybe a tablespoon extra of buttermilk.

Soft Pretzels
This was my first time boiling soft pretzels before baking them. Im not sure if it needs this step. The dough for this recipe (the one posted by Stephmo) was lovely to handle before baking in comparison to the soft pretzels recipe I have been using. Hopefully I will have a chance to make that recipe this week and perhaps share the recipe if all goes well.



Rustic Loaf
For this recipe I made two larger loaves, and left one loosely dusted with flour. The other I added carraway seed before the final shaped rise and used an egg yolk wash with more carraway seeds on top. My Mom loves this bread warm with applesauce and butter on the top. Notice the giant pulled off piece destroying my picture of the crumb! I was really happy with the results. I want to work on shaping and scoring. I loved the texture of the rye flour and want to bring out more grainy texture in the bread, but im not sure how this will effect the rise.

I am playing with a firm rye started and hope to make sourdough challah over my spring break this week. I am also on the look out for easter dinner and dessert recipes, as once again, I am responsible for the family holiday meal (a blessing and a curse to love to cook and bake!).

Happy Weekend Baking to All.

[DELETED BY AUTHOR]

Posted on www.evilshenanigans.com - 4/3/2009

Today is my birthday!!  I won't tell you how old I am ... that would just depress me.  But, I will tell you what does not depress me ...

Cupcakes! 

Especially when they are in fun red liners from acupcakery.com!!  Red is my absolute favorite color, and the liners stayed nice and bright after baking.  I love that!

So, to celebrate my birthday I made a batch of cupcakes to share with you.  Of course, you are not here to eat them ... I guess that means I will have to eat all these dark, moist, lucious, mocha cupcakes for you.  Oh, how I suffer! 

These have a nice hit of coffee which is the perfect compliment to the Dutch-processed cocoa powder.  So, in honor of me, make a batch of these cupcakes.  Consider it my gift to you.   I'm off to celebrate! 

Dark Chocolate Mocha Cupcakes   Yield 12

3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup sugar
1/3 cup Dutch-processed cocoa powder
4 tablespoons butter, melted
1/3 cup buttermilk
1 large egg, beaten with
1 egg white
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 tablespoons strong coffee (I used three tablespoons hot water with 1 tablespoon instant coffee)

Heat the oven to 350 F and line a 12-cup cupcake/muffin tin with liners. 

Sift the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cocoa powder, sugar, and salt.   Mix well.

Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and add the melted butter, buttermilk, eggs, vanilla, and coffee.  Blend until there are only a few small lumps left.

Scoop into lined cupcake tins and bake for 20 minutes, or until the centers spring back when lightly pressed.

Cool for three minutes in the pan before removing the cupcakes to a wire rack to cool completely.

Frost as desired.

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 bread worked great for me. I used the starter from WGB instead of Hamelman's. I started the levain yesterday afternoon and this morning it looked and smelled just like it was suppose to. I was out of bread, so I finished the recipe, baked one loaf today and have one left that I retarded at noon in the refrigerator. (Let's see now, it's suppose to be good for 18 hours in the fridge at 42ºF. Now that was really good planning on my part because now I've got to get up at 5 am!)

I'm very pleased with the results. I did 2 stretch and folds and let the loaf proof for 3 hours, then baked it under a cloche on a stone for 10 minutes. It took 30 minutes total. I got a lot of oven spring, it has a nice open crumb structure and a pleasant sourdough flavor. I'm hoping tomorrow's loaf will be a little more tangy because I enjoy the sour taste.

--Pamela

I found this site a couple of months ago and have been following some fascinating posts and the great exchange of information among the members. I have always loved the true French baguettes and during the early 90's when the first artisanal baking books like The Village Baker and Bread Alone came out, I tried my hands at making French baguettes. They were acceptable but not great. When I stumbled on this site and found the formulation for Gosselin's Pain a l'Ancienne that David of dmsnyder posted, I was motivated to try making it because I remember how good it was when I tasted it in France a couple of years ago. It turned out great. And then, I discovered the Anis Bouabsa formulation that David also shared with us. It turned out even better. So I decided to have a head to head comparison between the two a couple of weeks ago. I have had a couple of exchanges with David about this topic and he encouraged me to share the results with the TFL community, so here we go...

I used the folowing flour mix:

30% KA BF

58% KA APF

10% KA WWF

2% Bob's Red Mill Fava Bean Flour

2% Noirmoutier French sea salt

The mixing, fermentation, shaping and baking followed David's closely for both formulations. They were baked on the same day about one hour apart.

Both batches turned out great. The oven spring was about the same for both. The Gosselin crust was lighter in color than Bouabsa's which had a deep rich color. Both had good crunch and sweet caramelly flavor. The Gosselin crumb is soft and incredibly sweet with a wheaty aftertaste. The Bouabsa crumb was slightly more open, was more chewy and had a nutty flavor. I had an informal blind bread tasting with my wine tasting group and the Bouadsa baguette was unanimously the slight favourite.

The top photo shows the Bouabsa baguettes. The second photo shows the crumb detais with Bouabsa's on the left and Gosselin's on the right. The third photo shows the Gosselin baguettes. The fourth photo is a close-up of the Bouabsa crumb.

I want to thank David and all the TFL members for generously sharing their knowledge and experience.

Happy Baking!

I am brand new here. Just baked my first sourdough last weekend, and then a rye rustic loaf this past weekend. Before that I made pretzels and pitas. Loads of bread for my sisters and I. I go through phases with my baking, and right now making beautiful (healthy) breads is my goal. I am currently suffering from lack of a kitchen scale and even worse, a terribly unsharp knife. When I figure out how to post picture I will get them up. Hopefully in time for my challah attempt this weekend.

Thanks to all for creating this wonderful community.