Floydm's blog

I was preparing to make a couple of loaves of French Bread this weekend when I noticed we had some pesto sauce in the fridge that I needed to use up.  I went ahead and dumped it into the mixer to see what would happen.

Today was the first time since before the Haiti earthquake that I was able to bake much of anything. 

I baked a three seed sourdough (poppy, sesame, and flax) and an Italian bread (a pinch of yeast, some sourdough starter, and a couple of tablespoons of olive oil).  Both batches turned out very well and my starter proved to be amazingly resilient.

Thank you to the many TFL community members who have shown support for Mercy Corps' response to the disaster in Haiti.  Your support means a great deal to me. 

Overall we've had tremendous support from donors on this one.  It you hit Amazon.com today you'll see they are listing us as the preferred charity.

This evening I was planning on doing a longer post about how I set up and made the first post on TFL 5 years ago today and how I couldn't have imagined that it'd blossom into what it has become.  I was also going to share photos of a cute little bakery in my hometown that my mother sent me, but as you've likely heard a terrible earthquake hit Haiti this afternoon and my employer, Mercy Corps, is scrambling to organize a response to the earthquake.  We of the fundraising team are doing all we can to raise funds pro

I found a copy of January/February issue of Saveur today, the one that includes TFL in the 2010 Saveur 100.

TFL gets better exposure than "Cantonese Roast Meats" or "Harumi Kurihara," less than the "Tuna Melt" or "Pyrex Glass Measuring Cups."  I can't complain.

By the way, the food issue of The New Yorker just came out and had a long article on Baumkuchen, aka "Spit Cake."  The "spit" in the cake is a large metal stake that is dipped in batter and then rotated near a flame.  This process is repeated dozens of times and then the cake is removed from the stake and slices into disks.  Each slice has "rings" like a tree from the multiple layers of batter getting baked.

Last week I grabbed one of my favorite sandwiches from the Pearl Bakery, a pear and gorgonzola number served on their Walnut Levain.  This weekend I tried recreating the bread at home.

I was pleased with the results.  The formula was roughly:

500g AP flour (Pendleton Flour Mills Morbread)

330g water

100g ripe starter

10g kosher salt

My son's 2nd grade class toured Franz Bakery today.  I chaperoned this trip, naturally.

While out running errands this morning I stopped at St. Honoré Boulangerie in NW Portland.  I took a bunch of photos but it was dark and crowded.  These are the only two shots that came out.

The croissant, pain au chocolat, and pain au raisin we split were all good.  Nice treats on a rainy day.

By the way, a week or so ago I added a new email notification feature that I think is really handy.  If you go to:

My Account >> Edit >> Email Preferences

and check the box and save you can get a notification any time someone replies to a thread you've started.  I'm finding this a great way of keeping track of responses to blog entries I made weeks or months ago that otherwise I'd miss.