With living in a humid and hot country, I find my desire to bake dwindles when the hot weather is upon us.
Here, in southern mexico, by mid february, we are into the high 90's usually. In march ,105 F is usual. Kitchens are traditionally not air conditioned, as that is where the maid works. (Read "me" for maid when it comes to baking and cooking)
One of the grocery stores here in southern mexico has just brought in REAL hershey's chips in milk and semi sweet.
I thought this was an excellent time to try the Silpat (tm) cookie sheet liners I received from my sister for christmas. I had heard of Martha Stewart endorsing them along with several others,
My oven here is gas and very unstable when it comings to holding a temperature without fluctuating. The end result in cookies always seemed to be a slightly to moderately scorched bottom.
Last week I continued the experiments I have been doing since I learned about this method of bread baking.
I doubled the original recipe and followed the rest of the instructions but for using cornmeal instead of wheat bran ( I had none ).
I was even happier with this loaf. Doubling the recipe will be the norm for me from now on. I might even try tripling it.
I also kept the oven temperature as high as possible, probably about 500F. The crust was deep golden brown tinged with dark brown bits and looked great.
I returned from my three week vacation in Canada late on wednesday morning.
Yesterday I baked two loaves for neighbours and today I bake a 18 cup batch of dough ( ciabatta.) I will take this to the neighburs midnight dinner to celebrate.
I did not get to bake too much at my families homes..I was too busy cooking chicken enchilladas for my nephew, who at 18 can inhale them.
Tomorrow I have two couples coming for a traditional turkey dinner. so...Iwill keep this short as the brownies are due out of the oven in any moment..
Happy Hoidays to all,
Be well
I am sitting at my sister,s dining room table trying to type on a laptop.. I have never done this before and the keys are sooo narrow!!!
I baked yesterday, twice in a week!! I did the ciabatta and my brother in law took pictures with a great camara, pictures to come soon. He does part time camera work for hockey teams, so shooting bread gave him a whole different goal.
The flour worked differently again, and the crumb is once again different We had to open the windows as the cornmeal was burning and she was worried about the fire alarm going off..
This last batch of the NYT bread has worked out wonderfully for me. Kitchen temp a brisk 26C.
I used 3 cups AP flour and 1 cup WW.
1 1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp yeast
1 7/8 cups of room temp water.
Mixed as per the video,then into oiled bowl and covered with plastic and refrigerated 24 hours.
Removed from fridge and brought to room temp for three hours.
Folded twice at 1.5 hour intervals., after the above 3 hour climatizing.
This is Ramona proudly showing her first ever loaves. Nobody in her family has ever made bread this way. Mexico is not a country where loaves would have been easily accesible some years ago. The corn tortilla reigns. This is now changing with more people having access to stoves, and wheat.
Ramona has now cooked bread at her mothers home in Macuspana. She is eager to learn and cant wait to experiment with the loaves .
In preperation of the "times loaf experiment tomorrow,
we went to "el centro" (downtown) to a store known for its selection of enamel pots. I bought a wonderful 4 qt. baby blue one with lid and a handle for the equivalent of $7 US. There were larger ones that may have been 20qt pots for 17 US dollars.
I used the starter than I have been carefully feeding since last thursday night. All indications were right, smell, bubbles etc..and baked somethng that looked great, and felt like a doorstop. It was a VERY dense loaf, not what I would choose to have again. So I fed the starter and popped it into the fridge...perhaps I will try again next week.
