ehanner's blog

My 23 year old son is home from his job as a cruise ship musician. He plays saxophone on a huge ship traveling all over the world. When he returns for a little time off, I try to treat him to his favorite foods and breads. Today being St Patrick's Day in the US, I'm certain he is singing Irish tunes at one of Milwaukee's many Irish Pubs. I thought some of you might appreciate the humor in the picture he just sent me. Apparently some one gave him a slice of home made beer bread so he asked for the recipe.

A couple weeks back, Shiao-Ping picked up a new book and did a nice review on it here. I was intrigued by what I saw and ordered a copy from Amazon which arrived early this morning.

Last week nicodvb posted his most recent trial of 100% Rye flour bread. He declared it as good so I thought I would try it out and see if I could follow his steps.

Last week, I posted about my Horst Bandel bread from Hamelman's Bread. At first glance the crumb images looked good and the flavor was very good. However after some reflection on the bread and the process I decided my initial declaration of victory may have been over stated. While my first attempt was acceptable for a first try, I suspect I have much to learn about this style of bread.

Yesterday I made 2 loaves of my favorite rye with caraway seeds and bread spices. I decided to skip the sugar and swap with Black Strap Molasses. It was delicious as usual and the party I brought it to devoured most until the puppy got his way when no one was watching. I'll take that as a complement I guess.

This is a bread that I have been wanting to try for some time. Jeff Hamelman did a great job of presenting it in his book, "Bread" and the story that goes with how he learned about it is heart felt. This style of bread is a long way from just about everything you might be familiar with. It isn't airy and light. It doesn't have a beautiful crust in the traditional way we usually think of a nice golden color, expanding at a well placed slash. What it is, is a compact, almost waxy mass of slowly baked rye and wheat dough in a high hydration formula.

Shiao-Ping's excellent post on Mr. Nippon's Baguette formula and the images of her crumb and those in the book inspired me. From what I can tell, the 12 hour cool autolyse as a significant effect on the dough. The dough is sticky as Shiao-Ping cautioned and acted differently from any other 75% hydration dough I have worked with. It was trying to wind it's way up the shaft of the dough hook on my DLX mixer for one thing. It was window paining BEFORE kneading.

The other day, as I was in the process of purchasing a book on Amazon when I noticed the "Other people also bought this" feature that was pointing out a book I have wanted to look at for a long time. Brother Juniper's Bread Book by Peter Reinhart is a classic and I think his first published book.

Paging through it today, I am taken by the variety of good looking bread recipes. There isn't a single photo in the book so when I say good looking I mean the recipes look interesting.Reinhart's writing style is clear and easy to follow as is the case in all of his later works.

In another thread a few days ago, Andy (ananda) was discussing what a true artisan bread looked like and clipped a photo of this white bread in with a beautiful crumb structure. I asked him if he would share the details, which he was kind enough to oblige me.

There has been much discussion lately about the rather remarkable Gerard Rubaud as written by MC. Everyone seems to like the flavor of the multi grain levain and dough mix but the method is a trial for home bakers due to the tiny amounts involved in the starter.