Floydm's blog

I made a simple French Bread yesterday. I didn't use a pre-ferment or anything: I actually wanted to experiment with long knead times and see just how much of a difference in taste and volume it made. Something just didn't see right with my dough. It felt tight and, although moist, kind of puckered up.

After I tasted it it was obvious what was wrong: I added much too much salt.  Almost double.  The crumb still wasn't too bad:

I baked a couple loaves of French Bread and a Whole Wheat Loaf today: 

The French Bread turned out very good.  I used a poolish and autolyse, then when I went out for a hike this morning I popped the dough in the fridge so it had an extra slow, long rise. It always seems to help.

World Bread Day is coming up. On my birthday, October 16th, in fact.

Last year I baked a pumpkin french bread for it.

I may have to try that again, because it was good.

I baked some french bread today. 

Before baking:

After baking:

It was quite good.  The crust was a bit soft because I didn't use hot enough water to create steam, but overall quite good.

Brr... cold today, the furnace is on.  A perfect time to bake!

We're just back from a trip up to Victoria, BC.  Had some excellent baked goods at a cafe on Government Street.

I didn't get a picture of the danishes, but they were even prettier.

Enough talk, time to bake!

Things are starting to cool off, so I've managed to bake the last two weekends.

Two weekends ago I made a Potato Bread from Bernard Clayton's New Complete Book of Breads.

It was great. I'll definitely be baking it again, and probably posting a recipe here in the next few days.