Isand66's blog

    I just finished up the last of my decadent cream cheese rolls so it was time to bake a more healthy hearty bread but one that is not too heavy either.

I decided to try a double starter which I've done in the past.  My first inclination for this bread was to try an experiment and make all of the flour come from the pre-ferment but I chickened out at the last moment and only upped the starter amount slightly from my normal formulas.

 A few weeks ago I made some potato rolls using the Tangzhong  process and they came out excellent.

 I love nuts....some say I am nuts....well, I'll leave that up to you to decide but I think my wife has already made up her mind :).

Tangzhong is the technique of heating a portion of the flour and liquid in your recipe to approximately 65C to make a paste (roux).

While traveling for business the last two weeks in China, as usual I read my favorite website, www.thefreshloaf.com and couldn't wait to get home to try some new recipes.  One of the recipes I loved was Varda's Pugliese Revisited.    The

After returning from the first ever TFL gathering in Lexington MA last weekend I wanted to use some the rye starter that Varda gave me to make a rye bread.  Dave Snyder posted his latest bake of the above bread on The Fresh Loaf this past week and pushed me over the edge to try it myself.  You can find the recipe at his original post

  After returning from a great weekend at the first ever The Fresh Loaf get together just outside of Boston I ended up with some left over starters that I had brought with me.  I decided to use most of the corn flour/AP starter along with some AP starter to make my next bread.

I haven't made bread with my Yeast Water starter in a while so I figured I would try making a YW levain using my proofer set at 86 degrees F. and see how it came out.  I was hoping the proofer would allow the YW levain to develop better than it usually does and it did not disappoint.  The levain was made in 2 builds with the first one lasting 7 hours and the second about 4 hours.

     As I mentioned in my previous post I recently purchased a Brod and Taylor proofer and I have been experimenting with it to see how it affects the sourness and overall bread.

My friend Eric was stopping by to go to lunch yesterday so I told him I would bake bread for him to take home.  He requested something simple and plain.  I don't do simple and plain...it's just not part of my DNA, so what I came up with is as close as it gets!