Blog posts

I made wheat bread on Sunday. After my mild successes, I guess I was bound to get served a good lesson.

Weight is more important that volume. That finally hit home when I measured out the flour only to find 1 1/2 cups on Reinhart's flour is equal to 1 cup of my wheat flour. I was following his recipe blindly and ended up with an unsalvagable mess. Or at least, I thought it would be to much effort to salvage. Started over. Much better the second time.

This weekend I made the Fresh Herb Twist from Daniel Leader's Local Breads. It uses 3 fresh herbs — thyme and rosemary (from my garden) and basil. It was delicious with my beef vegetable stew!

Fresh Herb Twist

Fresh Herb Twist crumb

I made the Multi-grain levain from Hamelman's "Bread" for the first time about 6 weeks ago on Fleur-d-Liz's strong recommendation. I found it very good, but it didn't blow my socks off. Strangely, it developed a more delicious flavor after having been frozen and thawed. I thought the many flavors of the grains and seeds melded.

I made the Whole Wheat Levain from Hamelman's "Bread" this weekend. It turned out just okay. The taste and texture are fine, but, although there was pretty good oven spring, there was disappointing bloom.

Jewish pumpernickel is one of my favorite breads. I have made it only a couple times before, once from Greenstein's recipe in "Sectets of a Jewish Baker" and once from Reinhart's recipe in BBA. But I've never really followed Greenstein's recipe to the letter, because I've never had any stale rye bread with which to make altus.  Well, a few weeks ago, I put what was left of a loaf of Greenstein's Sour Rye bread in the freezer with which to make altus, and this weekend I made "real" Jewish Pumpernickel using altus, pumpernickel flour and first clear flour.

We don't really watch the superbowl, and in fact don't have a tv this year (don't ask) but why not eat silly food anyway?

Not my greatest photo, but we ate all the pretty samples so there's no chance for a re-shoot. In the bowl (impossible to make out) is homemade nacho cheese sauce. I made a simple white sauce with cheddar and monterey jack, and added some chopped whole jalapenos that I froze from the garden last year. Could be thicker but WAY tastier than the kind you get at the cafeteria!

Hi, it's raining here in San Diego, how about where you are? Here are some photos of things I've made in the last couple of weeks. Last weekend, we had our neighbors over for dominoes, and I made a king cake. They're from New Orleans (pre-Katrina), so I thought I'd bake the traditional Mardi Gras cake and see how close it got to the real thing. They said, 'yep, that's it'. I thought it came out rather dry, but I guess that's why you dump a box or so of powdered sugar icing on it. The recipe I used is here.

Tangy Yogurt Bread: 

http://i12etu.com/2008/02/tangy-yogurt-bread.html

3 c. proofed starter

1 cup plain yogurt

2 tsp salt

4 cups bread flour

Does anyone grow & use kefir...I've been growing it for 10 years, or so...it's a wonderful product & it's very easy to grow!   I've made "cream cheese" & "sour cream"...it's a wonderful substituted for buttermilk in baked goods & I've made sourdough starters with it.  If you'd like to know more about it, I recommend this site: http://users.chariot.net.au/~dna/kefirpage.html it's everything you'd want to know about kefir!