krasnyja's blog

Have taken a three year break from baking.  Now have two young boys and spent two years in Europe, so not much need for baking.  But now I am back in a less-crusty-bread-loving place, lonely without my family, so I am turning back to my old love.  Starting with a simpler recipe - Saturday Bread from Ken Forkish.

Have not posted any of my baking results recently, so I thought that I would share a photo of the 75% whole Wheat Bread from Ken Forkish's book.  It was pretty darn good, but since it was more healthy, not as much of a hit as the white.  :P

This weekend, I baked Pain de Campagne from Flour Water Salt Yeast.  I used my own levain, which I have been keeping alive for a few months now and which comes from Chad Robertson's Tartine recipe.  I dont understand why Ken Forkish uses so much flour in his starter, so I figured that I would just stick to my own levain without trying to emulate his recipe.  I only use about 150 grams of flour mix (50/50 AP and whole wheat), 75% levain, and 150 grams of water.

Decided to start with one of Ken Forkish's easier recipes and made the Saturday Bread.  It turned out pretty good and I would say it is probably the nicest looking bread that I have made on my short journey to bread geekdom.  Finally got the nice rings from my wicker basket (you should have seen some of my past disasters).  I used a czech flour to flour the basket - it was a coarse wheat and I think that made it less sticky than the previous AP I was using (didnt have to add rice flour). 

For the holidays, I decided to move away from the typical four ingredients and go with somethimg richer.  I remembered that when I was perusing the BBA book, I found a recipe that caught my eye - Portuguese Sweet Bread.  I hope you enjoy some of the pics tha I took along the way.  The bread turned out great, even though I was missing some of the key ingredients, like shortening and lemon and orange extracts.