foodslut's blog

Living in a part of the world with a fair number of Portuguese folks living here, I've heard of and read about broa bread, but I haven't been able to find a "gold standard" in any local bakery to compare to.  I found a broa bread in a Portuguese restaurant, but it was more like a heavy biscuit than a corny, slightly sweetish loaf I've been led to believe it is.  So I thought I'd share my latest experiment with the keeners here at TFL to see what you have to say.

I'm guessing I'm not alone here in trying different types of flour whenever I see some, leaving me over time with partial bags of a wide range of product. Given that, I thought: what would a REALLY multi-grain baguette using odds-and-end flour?

I love the idea of a rustic "ploughman's lunch", so I thought I'd try to replicate the experience (or, at least, channel it) via a savoury bread.

I started with a beer-bread base inspired by Dan Lepard's stout loaf recipe, only using an ale rather than the stronger stout:

Figured it was about time to share what few resolutions I've made this year as a way to make my committment (such as it is) public.

1)  Try not to worry so much.

2)  Assume everyone you deal with will have at least one crappy day.

3)  Give away more bread.

On the last one, I calculated I baked ~600 lbs of bread last year, with much of that given away.  People seem to enjoy it, so I'll aim at giving away more this year.

Have a great baking 2012, everyone!

Here's my story about changing my house bread because of wanting to share olive oil.

We brought back 10 litres of freshly-pressed olive oil from a press in my parents' home town in Italy, and we wanted to share it with friends.  Not having enough small flip-top bottles in the house, I bought some beer for the resealable bottles.  I don't drink beer, so I thought I'd use it up making some bread.  I was cautious, going 50-50 beer-water on my house bread formula.

I know I've been concentrating on going low (on yeast) and slow (on the ferment) with my breads to improve the quality/flavour.  Sometimes, though, life intervenes.  I managed to use some of what I've learned here and elsewhere to get a reasonable quality bread ready very quickly.

I was inspired by how simple this 1-2-3 Sourdough recipe was,  but my first try was less than successful (OK taste, but dense brick crumb).  So, taking the advice everyone was kind enough to offer, I tried again.

I was inspired by those trying to improve the grigne on their bread by using metal bowls or aluminum baking tins to cover their loaves.  Since I was doing a batch of "local rye", I thought I'd give it a try myself.

Retaurants have house wines - the reasonably decent go-to when you can't make up your mind - so why can't I have a "house bread" as a fall-back standard when I can't figure out what else to make?

I'm trying (so far unsuccessfully) to get onto the sourdough/levain train, but my strength so far seems to be straight dough formulas.  Nonetheless, I wanted a bit of pre-ferment action, so I've adopted a dual-use strategy with one of my previous fads.

I've tried Bertinet's beer poolish bread in the past (also seen here), so I thought I'd try a bit of a variation on the theme - adding just a bit more non-white flour.

Here's the formula I ended up developing: