dabrownman's blog

that I hope to eventually use to make pizza.  It's like a mini wood fired oven.  It's built out of huge hominy can and a 40-56 oz can of beans. It's the best BBQ and smoker I have ever owned and it was nearly free! I'm pretty sure I could get a small 12" stone for it and turn it into a pizza oven fairly easily. It works on a small pile of 1/4" twigs and 4 charcoal briquettes. Amazing heat from that beast.  Throw some wood chips on top you have a smoker that makes the best meat you have ever had.  I can see a Pizza oven too .......

Isand66 (Ian) has been using a much greater percentage of starter/Levain in his recent SD breads.  As I was looking around for a place to start with this idea, I ran across Chad Robertson's Country SD that uses this same technique.  I also prefer at least 10% rye and WW in the finished loaf and wanted to make sure that was the case in this bread.  I also wanted a higher hydration dough and one that had more AP flour and less bread flour.   This bread sure looks good on the outside but I can't cut into it yet until my wife gives the OK since

This fancy French named bread is really a Rustic Country San Francisco Sourdough.  It originally started out as a Glenn Snyder Country SD bread minus the rustic and the sweetbird, that she is,  took the recipe and tweaked it some and came up with the most amazing crust on a bread I have ever seen.   I just had to try my hand at it and converted it further to more my liking by; using a rye sour starter,  grinding my own WW and rye, increasing the rye to equal the WW, reducing the AP accordingly and then adding 50 g of whole WW and rye berries that were

In gratitude for all of her help in my yeast water bread quest, I created a YW bread named for Akiko,  that would be fitting for her graciousness, generosity and skill.  I made this bread today and it is everything I would want in a YW bread if it were to be named after me but, she is the one stuck with it now  :-)  Thanks again to Akiko also known as teketeke at TFL.  A great YW bread named after a great lady.

Today is my wife's birthday.  Who wouldn't want a chocolate crusted orange flavored cheese cake with an orange flavored; chocolate ganache, truffles and chocolate shavings for toppings?  Home made aranchello makes this a special birthday cake.

Many folks are putting cheese in theitr bread.  Why?  Because all bread including Cheese Bread tastes good.  Especially, if you put bacon in it.  Fresh cheese making is easy, way easier than making bread.  Here is how.

Fresh Cheese

 Ingredients

I didn't want to cut into it. Not then. I thought that there might be something purple or green or both inside. It could easily have been a purple people eater or even something much, much worse. I had to wait until the morning light - didn't want to be crippled by darkness if it was something horrible ........and emerged very hungry. I would have needed every advantage to escape if it had attacked. I contained it in a brown paper bag so it stayed nice and comfy, unperturbed......