Isand66's blog

It's not quite New Years Eve yet, but I figured it was time to try some champagne in a sourdough bread anyway.  What goes better with champagne than some orange juice?  (I hate strawberries so that was not an option!).  I added some dried blood orange peel  to the starter and the final dough to add some nice fruity flavor.

I created a durum semolina starter and used durum flour along with some KAF French Style flour for the final dough.

I wanted to make a bread to bring into my new office and my wife had just cooked some bacon for our grilled cheese with bacon sandwiches so naturally I needed to use the left-overs in a bread.  I started out with the Italian Country Bread from Peter Reinhart's BBA book and changed most of the ingredients while adding a few additional as well.

Sorry for the delay in posting but it's been a crazy past couple of weeks.  First we were away for the entire week of Thanksgiving and then as soon as we got home the Monday after I had to drive to PA to start my new job.  I just got home last night after basically being away for 2 weeks so it's nice to sleep in my own bed and see my kitties and my wife of course.

If you live in New York like me you are spoiled as there is little doubt we have more bagel shops than anywhere in the country and most of them are very good.  I have tried bagels in other cities and usually they taste like a dense tasteless ball of dough.  Since I usually can get great bagels in my town I usually don't make them myself but I figured I would give it a go with a twist of cour

The storm is upon us as I try to write this post before losing power.  Hurricane Sandy is set to touch down in a few hours but already the wind is howling and the water is starting to rise over the docks on Long Island.

Following up on the success I had with the 36 hour Durum Semolina SD bread I made last week I wanted to try a Pain au Levain version and see if I could get similar results.

I have not made any rolls in a while and since my wife insisted on some "simple" rolls for our lunch sandwiches this weekend I decided to whip something up using instant yeast instead of my sourdough starter or yeast water starter.

A few weeks ago I finally had some good results with TxFarmer's 36 Hour Baguette recipe and I have been wanting to try making some boules with this technique and see how they turned out.  I decided to make a Durum starter and I cut the hydration down slightly from the baguette recipe.  I followed the same basic method for mixing and retarding the dough with some slight modifications including