Lazy Loafer's blog

Finally, I took some time off from baking for customers (at least cut down my baking days) so I have time to do a few more things, like getting ready for Christmas. I figured this was a good time to try the no oven challenge.

Well, I am chuffed. I've been working on version of 'beer' bread that has all kinds of good things in it. I've been inspired by several people (Cedar Mountain, danni3ll3, dabrownman among others) and was also spurred to action by a happy little relationship. My regular beer bread is mostly white flour with a poolish starter made from my husband's pilsner-style beer. The place where he gets his beer making supplies (has been for about 30 years) asked if he could bring in some bread to see if they could sell it, and that worked out well.

Sometimes, people just want a loaf of nice white bread, you know? I tried this recipe from America's Test Kitchen's book "Bread Illustrated", and found it to be just the thing. It's a soft bread, enriched with some olive oil and a bit of sugar, made with AP flour instead of bread flour. A pre-ferment (sponge or poolish) gives it a flavour boost too. The dough is very soft and delicate.

Yay, The FWSY Country Brown turned out beautiful! I did fudge the recipe a bit. I cut down on the initial hydration and then added water back in when I was happy with the consistency of the dough, so not sure of the final hydration but the dough was very soft and stretchy. I used fresh hand-milled stone-ground flour for the whole wheat portion (about 38% overall) so I wasn't sure how much water it would absorb. The grain was hard red spring wheat from a local farmer, and the flour smelled wonderful!

I know, I know, I said I was going to create something new for homemade bread day. But I baked eight loaves of Buckwheat Cranberry bread (a variation on Buckwheat Cherry posted here) on Sunday, and have four dozen hamburger buns and ten loaves of beer poolish bread to make today and bake tomorrow, and I wanted to get my Christmas pudding done, so here it is.

This is an old recipe I've been using for many years. I like it for a couple of reasons:

It was my daughter's baby shower on the weekend, and I made good old spinach dip. Of course, you need to put it in a sourdough bread bowl, right? So I added one 123 sourdough boule to the weekend bake. It turned out to be so good, I'm making smaller bread bowls (or boules, if they don't want them for holding soup!) for the subscription list customers for Wednesday. Nice creamy open gelatinized crumb, but I didn't get a crumb shot because I hollowed it out at the shower and it was devoured!

Sometimes it's nice to get back to basics. :)

I watched British Bake-off with my daughter last night. It was Botanicals week, and the bread challenge was Fougasse. Not being one to turn down a challenge...

I find the flour here in the UK to be a bit of a challenge in itself, being used to Canadian bread flour. The dough was very, very sticky and took a long time to develop. I ended up with so much stuck to me and the bench, even after 10-12 minutes of slapping and folding, that there was barely enough left for the bread! Oh well, a challenge is meant to be challenging, after all.

Well, after having spent five days in Prague, sampling their wonderful bread (there is even fresh, home-baked sourdough multi-grain bread in the convenience stores!), I came back to my daughter's house to find no fresh bread. So off we go again. First, some more of the seed bread for toast. This also makes very good toasted egg, ham and cheese sandwiches for breakfast, especially with some of the excellent cheese I got at Neal's Yard in London Borough Market - the best cheese shop in the best market in the world! :)

Well, we're here safe and sound in Huntingdon, Cambs in the UK. It's hot and sticky in our daughter's little flat, and of course the kitchen is a bit challenged for space, especially the tiny British fridge! But I still had to make bread (not about to eat store-bought!). I did bring some of my starter, which seems to have survived the trip over. I fed it with Strong white bread flour (Allinsons I think, without going to look) and it bubbled up nicely overnight.

Okay, I'm quite sure one is not allowed to have this much fun while baking bread. :) With all the ideas purcolating through my head, many sparked by questions and comments on this site, I decided to go a little nuts with this weekend's fun bake.