Floydm's blog

I wrote a blog entry on MercyCorps.org today about The Fresh Loaf Fall Fundraiser that some folks here might enjoy reading.  Fingers crossed, hopefully some other online communities and groups will use what we did as a model and hold similar drives from time-to-time.   

Again, thank you to everyone who participated and/or showed your support.

I baked two batches of bread today, the first being a batch of Whole Wheat Seeded Rolls.

I used the master recipe from Jeff Hertzberg and Zoë François's new book Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day as the base for these.  Portlanders: Jeff and Zoë are going to be at Powell's Tuesday evening.

I made Struan Rolls to go with a pot of soup Dorota made tonight.

Often my Struan comes out a bit heavy (like in the photo in the recipe I linked to), but tonight I nailed it.  They were light, fluffy, soft, and just the perfect sweetness.  When you get Struan right, it is hard to beat.

We started the day with Sourdough English Muffins.

After lunch I made my first batch of Anis Bouabsa's baguettes.

I looked into my pantry today and found rye flour, whole wheat flour, rice flour, barley flour, cake flour, pizza flour, and high gluten flour for making bagels but no bread flour.  So, like ApplePie, I decided to go flour shopping.

I made bagels this morning using some of the General Mills All Trumps High Gluten Flour I'd ordered from NYBakers.  They turned out well.

With cream cheese and a tomato picked fresh from the garden this morning they were delicious.

Beautiful spring weather in Oregon this year so I've been spending a lot of time outside and away from the oven. I did bake some delicious sourdough boules yesterday though.

In other news, the local berry stand down the block opened today. 

I need to update both the features on the homepage.  Any nominees?  Even though it isn't a brand new thread, I'm thinking about David's post on Anis Bouabsa's baguettes since I keep seeing folks trying that formula and being pleased with it and I've been meaning to try it too.  Maybe a rye post too?  Or a SD post?  I'm open to suggestions.

Things have been very busy for me lately.  One of the more exciting things has been finally launching the new Mercy Corps website, which we've been working on for some time.  I'm very pleased with how it came out and urge folks to go check it out.

I baked two loaves today.

The white loaf is a sourdough dough I prepared on Wednesday while working from home.  I wanted to see if I kept a sourdough in the fridge for 4 days would it still bake up well.