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I have been making some nice bread lately.

My shaping is coming along and I am favoring shapes like ciabatta and just very rustic looking breads and rolls in general.

I go between rye and semolina doughs and am enjoying making Fenu shapes. They look so cool :)

I also decided whilst I was shaping to try shape some into bagguettes......not the best I must say buuuuuuut, still tasted great :)

Here are two batards with varies slashes

My lovely Rustic Rolls that went down a treat with my family

And after an entire day of baking, I think a well earned glass of Cab sav was in order!

I DO LOVE baking bread :)

Thegreenbaker

These are nicely flavored with cocoa and cinnamon and lightly frosted.

Full recipe is here

http://bakinghistory.wordpress.com/2007/07/25/cocoa-buns/

So I have been a busy little beaver this past week and fate has been mostly kind. Even though i was hobbled by last week's unfortunate encounter with a slow cooker box, I wasn't really slowed down too much in the kitchen. First up this week was a garlic and asiago cheese ciabatta built on a poolish.

Outside:

and inside:

the picture is a bit washed out but it had a nice open crumb laced with asiago and chunks of garlic. crust was thin, toasty and plenty chewy. I'd to get it a little thicker in future attemps which I think will happen if I use my starter instead of commericial yeast (lower the ph) and bake it a little longer.

The following day, I hit up the restaurant supply store and went on a bit of a shopping spree. A metal peel, two bannetons and an oven thermometer (finally) later, I returned, anxious to bake. I whipped up some jalapeno and cheddar bread with some levain from the day before. It looked great going in the oven, but then mr thermocouple died awfully dead and left me with a slowly cooling oven and these half-cooked loaves:

and the marvelous crumb that would have been:

The next day that old clunker of an oven was one part younger and back in action, but it was a bit too late for me. I had taken off for NJ/NYC with my grilfriend for the weekend. We found ourselve in pasticceria bruno which, despite the prominently displayed copy of Artisan Baking, took me all of a half hour to realize that this was the bakery Glezer featured in her book along side Biago's pandoro recipe. I ordered four seasons pizza and a cup of dulce de leche gelato. The food was delicious. The pizza crust was a bit soft for my liking, but the out of this world creamy fresh mozz more than compensated.

I also got a loaf of sourdough bread to take home. From the looks of the camera-shy crumb, it was about 70% hydration and have a small percentage of whole wheat flour. We ate it the following day with some herbed olive oil. The bread was subtley sour and its hearty crust and airy crumb were very well balanced. I hope to make some progress towards achieving this kind of balance in the coming months. Here's the loaf:

We got back last night and this evening I started baking for my trip on the 27th to lake placid. I'm staying in a house with 20 bread lovers so I'm planning to bring about 5 loaves with me. I made two boules to take and a baguette for myself. The dough is built on pate fermentee, 65% hydration, and had a small percentage of whole grain rye and wheat germ added. Tastes slightly sweet and nutty, with a very light crumb.

The outside, all washed out with that pesky flash:

and the crumb, which refused to stand still for its close-up. Please, forgive the blurriness:

phew. well, once school starts again i'll have something to keep me from baking non-stop, but until then I've got another month to blow paychecks on flour. This week i'm working on returning my starter to glory, and might bake one more batch of bread to take up to lake placid. I'm thinking about making some pizza with some friends on wednesday night too... we'll see.

benji

This is my first loaf from spelt flour. I wish I had pics of various stages to show you, as I'd love some ideas on why I got absolutely no oven spring from this loaf. The flavor, interior texture and crust were all good. The crumb wasn't as open as I would have liked, but not closed either. I followed the basic NYT/Lahey NK method. I've always used 1.5 cups of liquid for white flour and 2 cups for whole wheat. Knowing that spelt absorbed less flour than wheat, I used 1.75 cups for this loaf. I always got good oven spring using only 2/3's WW flour, but the only loaf that was 100% WW I baked in a pan - here - and didn't get a lot of oven spring either.

This is how I made this loaf.
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1 pound whole spelt flour
1/4 teaspoon instant yeast
1 teaspoon salt
2 ounces plain yogurt
12 ounces water

Combine dry ingredients. Stir yogurt and water together, then add to flour mix. Stir until all flour is moistened, then knead briefly with heavy spoon in bowl. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and leave on counter for about 12 hours. (At this point I had bubbles on top of the dough and the gluten strands were quite visible on tipping the dough bowl.) Turn dough out on floured surface. Do a few stretch-and-folds. (At this point I may have let the dough rest an hour or so, followed by a couple more stretch-and-folds and a 15 minute rest. I just don't remember.) Round dough and put in colander to rise. After a few hours, it wast risen only half as well as the white flour dough in this pic. It wasn't even quite to the top of the colander but passed the finger poke test, so I hoped it was ready to bake. (That is, if I gently poked the dough, the indentation was quite slow to fill in - the test mentioned in Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book.)

Turn dough out on baking stone preheated well in a 500F oven. Remove at 20 minutes as the interior temp is about 210F.
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This was the most extensible dough I've handled. It never did develop much resistance to my folding or shaping. Is that an indication that the gluten was underdeveloped? Should I have done a few more folds, until the dough felt a bit firmer? After baking, I remembered that I often added 1/4 tsp ascorbic acid (Vit C) and a tablespoon or more gluten to my whole wheat loaves. I had assumed that the Vit C was redundant with the yogurt and didn't even think about adding gluten. Also, salt should have been 1.5 teaspoons.

I am so close! Finally found the little camera icon, duh, but still can't transfer a photo to the server. I'll keep trying, A

Since I wanted a small batch of these, I started with Floyd's recipe.  I also took note of MysticBunny's comment that she got the best flavor with an overnight sponge, knowing that this was very true of most breads.  To simplify things, I simply made Floyd's recipe using only 1/4 tsp. of yeast.  (I knew that reducing the yeast like this would stretch the rise time out to at least 15 hours.) Rather than a thorough mix or knead, I quickly mixed everything; let it rest a bit and then did a few stretch-and-folds.  I left the dough on the counter to ferment overnight.  The next day, the dough was at least tripled.  I wasn't ready to bake at this point so deflated, did another stretch-and-fold and refrigerated the dough.  Due to other circumstances, the dough sat in the fridge for a day and a half, not the few hours I had envisioned! 

I would have liked these a bit larger.  I'm not sure what thickness I rolled them to, but it was less than 1/4". The dough could have been a bit cool, or more likely I needed to let it relax for a few minutes.  At any rate, I couldn't roll them any thinner. I baked these for about 5 minutes, which allowed them all to puff and gave me a bit of color on the bread. The bread was delicious The dough didn't suffer too much from its long refrigeration.  Here it is, just before I shaped it.

Dinner was delicious

Everyone was hungry.

How frustrating! I spent most of the afternoon figuring out how to get the pictures into the computer but now I can't manage to send them! Zounds! What is the saying about not teaching an old dog new tricks? The instruction book doesn't tell me how either. Is anyone able to give me some guidance, please? A

A fruity flavor squares and low in fat.

Dough:
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour.
1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour.
2 1/4 teaspoons yeast.
1 teaspoon backing powder.
1 teaspoon vanilla essence.
1/2 teaspoon vanilla powder.
3/4 teaspoon salt.
1/4 cup sugar.
1/4 cup low fat yogurt.
1/3 to 1/2 cup water.
1 1/2 tablespoon oil.
2 egg whites.


Topping:
1/4 cup low fat cream cheese.
1/2 cup blackberry jam.
3 apples (peeled and chopped).


Crumble:
1/4 cup all purpose flour.
1 tablespoon butter.
1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence.
2 tablespoons sugar.
1/4 cup almonds, chopped.


1)To make dough: mix all the ingredients; knead for 10 minutes, until you get smooth dough. Let rest for 40 minutes.

2)Press dough into a baking pan, spread with cream chesses.

then blackberry jam,

and top it with chopped apples.

3)To make the crumble: work butter into flour then add sugar, vanilla, and almonds. Sprinkle the mixture on top of apples.

4) Cover and let rise for 30 to 40 minutes.

5)bake at 350 F . for 25 minutes or until cooked and browned.

my homemade blackberry jam:

http://arabicbites.blogspot.com

meedo

I found instructions to make an apple bread in a vintage American cook book by J. L. Croly (1870) which simply indicated to use 1 part of pureed stewed apples and two parts of flour plus salt and yeast, using either white or Graham flour.

The result is a really good bread. Full recipe is here http://bakinghistory.wordpress.com/2007/07/14/apple-bread/

It's been a while since I've had the luxury of daily check-ins with TFL. Lots going on this summer, and actually I really don't have the time even now! But I made some sourdough sandwich bread today for the first time (so far I have only made rustic loaves with my starter), and I wanted to get the recipe written down and share it with anyone else who might like it.

I already have a favorite sandwich bread, but wanted to try using my homegrown 100% hydration starter in a sandwich loaf. Specifically, I wanted to use my starter in my favorite sandwich bread. I started with a google search and came up with a method for using starter in your favorite recipe. The website (which I can't find now, typical) stated that this was a method modified from one in Sourdough Jack's Cookery. Take 2/3 of the flour from your recipe and add it to all of the water, plus 1 cup of active starter. Stir, cover, and set on the counter overnight. Then add the rest of the ingredients and proceed as usual. This method as written, however, only allowed for a 10 minute rest after mixing, followed by final shaping. I wanted a bulk fermentation followed by shaping and a final proof. So, here's what I did, using amounts from my recipe:

Night before baking:

Combine 1 C starter (at feeding time, I feed mine every 12 hours at a 1:4:4 ratio) with 4 C KAF bread flour and 2 C Brita-filtered water at room temp (or it might have even been straight from the fridge). Stir, cover with plastic wrap and leave out overnight.

Day of baking:

Pour sponge mixture into mixer bowl and add 1/4 C melted butter, 2 TBSP sugar, 2 tsp kosher salt, and 1 C flour. Mix until combined, then add remaining cup of flour until dough is fairly stiff (my usual yeast-raised dough uses about 6 C flour and 2 C water, plus 1/4 C melted butter, for around a 35% hydration level). The dough will clear both the sides and bottom of the bowl. Knead at speed 2 for about 4 minutes or until dough passes the windowpane test. Transfer to oiled bowl and let rise in warm place until doubled, around 2 hours.

Shape into loaves and place into greased pans. Let rise for about an hour, or until light and risen nicely, then bake at 375.

This bread is tangy but not terribly sour. It tastes a little like Panera's sodo, actually, but is less chewy and has a very thin and soft crust. Moist, tender and fine crumb. Can't wait to try it in a ham sandwich!