occidental's blog

I've been attempting to improve my baguette making skills over the past few weeks.  This weekend I came up with my own formula based on a few of the things I learned from my last effort's with Pat's (proth5's) baguette formula.  Most notably I wanted to come up with a relatively low hydration formula using AP flour.  I also wanted to get a bit of whole wheat flour in the mix as well, and come up with enough dough to make two decent sized baguettes .  With that in mind I came up with the following formula which I calculate to be at 66% total hydration:

It's been a long while since I posted.  Summer came and bread baking was put on the back burner.  With fall comes colder temps and more time around the house, so back to bread baking I go.  I've actually baked quite a few loaves in the past weeks but have not posted them.  Anyway, I won't attempt to catch up but will post today's bake at least!

Today I made Ciabatta Rolls from the formula found in "Local Breads".  This is of course a very wet dough but since there isn't really shaping involved it's pretty fun to work with.  Instead of loaves I stretched the dough out and used a pizza cutter to make rolls. 

I placed these on parchment and let rise for about 30 minutes, until they start to get 'pillowy' - yes a very technical state of dough.

Recently I baked Oatmeal Cinnamon Rasin bread form Hammelman's "Bread".   There are a few good write ups on this bread on this site, just do a search...

A few days ago I made Lavash Crackers from Reinhart's Bread Bakers Apprentice.

Inspired by Susan's post on her [url=http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/15544/today039s-bread] sesame sourdough [/url] I recently made my own attempt. I admit it isn't as pretty as hers but the taste is great and the crumb is also to my liking.

I've been reading David's many posts on his [url=http://www.thefreshloaf.com/user/dmsnyder] blog [/url] about San Joaquin Sourdough, a formula he developed that was inspired by a long bulk ferment [url=http://www.thefreshloaf.com/user/janedo] Janedo [/url] wrote about after a visit with Anis Bouabsa.  David had tried enough variations of this formula I had to do some reading before I settled on the approach I was going to take for my first atte

I recently baked Pain au Levain from Hammelman's book 'Bread..."  This is the second formula I've tried from this book, following two fairly sucessful attempts at Vermont Sourdough.  There are a few differences between the two.  Vermont SD starts with a liquid levain while PaL starts with a stiff levain.  Hammelman calls for whole rye in Vermont SD while calling for medium rye flour in PaL.  Also, a long final ferment is called for with Vermont SD while it is recommended not to go for the long ferment with PaL.  I didn't vary from the formula and had pretty sat

Hi all, I've been enjoying all your posts over the last week or so, it looks like many of you produced great breads for the holidays.  I did some baking over the holidays I need to catch up on blogging about.  I was away from home so in other words, away from the mixer, the baking stone, my arsenal of flours and the sourdough I am used to working with.  Add to that new brotforms I received for Christmas and you don't know what will happen.  Thankfully I have been reading up here at the fresh loaf and this gave me the opportunity to experiment with new methods and get out

Over the past weekend I thought I'd get into one of my books that I haven't baked from yet, "Bread" by Jeffrey Hammelman.  Being a sourdough fanatic I decided to start with a sourdough and selected the Vermont sourdough, which appears to be one of Hammelman's standbys.  I had great results with the formula and this bread may become one of my favorites if I can repeat the results.  I followed the formula fairly close, however following the mix the dough felt a bit on the dry side and I added about a tablespoon of water.  Once the dough had a chance to autolyse and I did t