KazaKhan's blog

My starter finally kicked into gear yesterday afternoon (started, Sunday 26th, March). It looked ready so I had a go at a lunch loaf. After a nice and quick first rise I shaped the dough and let it sit for a couple of hours before putting in my little proofer thingy. It didn't seem to be going well so I decided I was going to put in the fridge before going to bed. I forgot about it until I was on my way to bed when I noticed it was ready to bake, so on goes the oven at 12:30 at night. I took it out of the oven around 1:30 wrapped it in a tea towel and went to bed.

I had a go at baked yeast doughnuts that were not very good. The baguette here is from some dough left in the fridge on Sunday and baked Friday, it was not good. Today I thought I'd have a crack at a chocolate sponge roll using the recipe from my cake class I missed last Thursday. The roll didn't work out so I cut it in half and stacked it with some cream in the middle.

I started today with a generic sponge that I used to make my standard white loaf & baguette, flax seed plait and some choc-chip hot cross buns. I wasn't sure at first if it was going to work out today trying a sponge and bulk ferment. So no bread improver and less yeast than usual. I started mixing the sponge at 12:30 and the first loaf was into the oven at 4:00. Now that I'm using two cast iron trays on the bottom of the oven to which I add a tray of ice between them, I'm getting a very nice bloom. Despite the ugliness of the buns they were quite nice.

Monday... Tuesday... Wednesday... Thursday...

I started out on Saturday morning creating a fresh starter using 75% water to flour. I moved on to a lunch loaf and a couple of baguettes.

I was searching for some information relating to my bakers course when I stumbled upon the Bread and Breadmaking book. I could only find it available on the Internet Archive.

I started making bread about six months ago, I've been enjoying making bread so much that I've started TAFE to become a baker. My goal when I started was to produce a soft white sandwich bread in as short a time as possible. Now that I can do that I'll share what I've learnt.