dmsnyder's blog

Having heard the stories home-millers tell about the superior flavor of their breads, I finally bought a Mock Mill attachment for my KitchenAid mixer. I have milled both rye and wheat flours with this mill and used them in breads with around 30% whole grain flours. The breads were very good, but I honestly couldn't say they were superior to those made with commercial flours of good quality.

Italian bread with currents, fennel and pine nuts

May 6, 2017

David M. Snyder

When I started baking sourdough breads, Susan Tenny's “Wild Yeast Blog” was, along with The Fresh Loaf, a major source of inspiration. Susan was also very active on The Fresh Loaf as “susanfnp.” Well, sadly, Susan has not kept up her blog, but it does remain accessible and worth a visit.

This was a busy baking week (for me). I baked for two potluck dinners and for my wife and me.

Thursday, I had a committee meeting in the evening. I brought a San Joaquin Sourdough.

I bake a SJSD for home as well, but also a 90% rye bread, my currently preferred base for cream cheese and lox.

I have made sourdough breads with tart dried fruit and toasted nuts for many years. Recently, I have been less happy with the ones I have been making. I don't think the breads are any worse. I think my standards are higher. So, this week I tried adding figs and walnuts to my current favorite sourdough just to see how it worked. Well, it is a winner. It's my new favorite fruit/nut sourdough. It is lighter with a better aerated, moister, more tender crumb than others I have made, and the flavor is as good if not better than my previous best. The crust is nice and crunchy.

I had made sourdough pita breads a few months ago with 50% whole wheat flour. They were much better than "store bought," as everything I had read led me to expect. I had experimented with two methods of shaping - rolling out versus stretching (like a pizza) - and thought rolling out had better results (a surprise). I also didn't allow any proofing time. I divided, shaped and baked. This time, I shaped all the pitas by rolling and allowed a rather brief proof period - about 10-15 minutes. I think this improved the puffing out of the pitas.

We just returned from a week and a half on Maui. It was a long-deferred first visit to that island, and I hope we visit again soon.

We ate well. Hawaii is the home of "Asian Fusion" cuisine, and we ate a lot of it. The fish was simply fabulous - so much better than the very freshest fish I can get where I live. Because we found a fish market with wonderful fish, right off their own boat, I did cook in our rented condo a couple times.

Baking December, 2016

My quest for “Old-Style” San Francisco Sourdough bread: A tasty digression

October, 2016

This trial builds on what I learned from my first two trials. It is a bit of a detour in that I have made some changes that, I hope, result in a bread more to my current taste, even though it deviates from the breads of the old style in having higher hydration and whole grain flours.

Colombo, Parisian, Larraburu. These bakeries produced the bread that made “San Francisco Sourdough” unarguably the most iconic bread produced in America. They are all gone now, and while San Francisco is still (again?) home to some amazingly delicious sourdough breads, the only place to get that old-style San Francisco Sourdough bread is at the Tadich Grill restaurant. Theirs is especially made by Boudin Bakery and is not available anywhere else.

This weekend, I wanted to make a rye bread to go with smoked fish, and, since I was refreshing my rye sour anyway, I also made a pain au levain with a rye starter. The rye is another Berliner Landsbrot (thank you Stan Ginsberg). The Pain au levain is a formula posted quite a while back by Hansjoakim. Formulas for both are available on TFL.