Floydm's blog

You know you've got the baking bug bad when you find yourself making a sponge on a Saturday night not even sure what you'd want to bake the next day, just figuring it is a good idea to have one ready. I think I may try a ciabatta again, but who knows? Still, I'm glad to have my poolish handy.

I forgot to mention that I baked kaiser rolls again yesterday. They were mighty tasty, though they still don't look like professional kaiser rolls. I actually like the rough look of them though. Anyone have any kaiser shaping tips?

I tried making the poolish ciabatta from the Hamelman bread book today. I was not paying much attention when I added everything to the mixer and I must have added too much flour or too little water, so it was clear it was not going to be a ciabatta after all. So a french bread loaf it turned out to be. One thing I did do was focus more on the scoring.

I finally bought Jeffrey Hamelman's Bread book the other day. I baked the poolish baguettes from it today and following his instructions on mixing, shaping, scoring, and baking. It was largely successful, though I made a few mistakes. The dough seemed pretty sticky, but Hamelman is correct that folding the dough during rising tightens things up nicely.

Back to work tomorrow. During my week off I managed to bake pain de Provence, bagels, chocolate chip banana bread, kaiser rolls (recipe to come, after I try it a few more times), pain sur poolish, and an apple pie. Not bad consider everything else we did (3 days at the beach, a day hiking, lots of visits to the local playgrounds, and so on).

I've been on vacation this week. Of course I have to be a bakery tourist. I came across Bread & Ocean in Manzanita, Oregon (see map). A nice little place, that makes some interesting sounding breads: fig-walnut bread, potato-rosemary leek bread, spelt bread, german seeded bread, as well as the standard french bagettes and sourdoughs. I tried one of their sweets, an almond-poppy seed bun.

Tomatoes? From the garden.
Basil? From the garden too.
Garlic? Yeah, I grew that in the garden as well.
Cheese? Milked my own cow Ok, I bought that. But it turned out wonderful.

Two baking experiments yesterday. One was a big success, the other a total failure.

The first experiment was tweaking the banana bread recipe. I made two small changes (added a 1/2 a cup of whole wheat flour and a cup of vanilla yogurt) and it was *sooo* good. I want to try it one more time to verify my measurements and then I'll post a recipe and pics.

I made croissants in honor of Bastille Day today. They actually turned out OK, better than I expected.




I'll try to post the recipe in the next day or two. Too tired tonight.

I was preparing my my French bread article yesterday and I wondered whether it was un-American to bake French bread on 4th of July. Maybe I need to call it Freedom Bread, like the Freedom Fries they serve in the congressional cafeteria.

:-D (I'm joking, I assure you).