proth5's blog

It's a slow, agonizing sort of thing that I do.  (Especially being able to bake only once a week.  Hey, King Arthur Flour - if you need a full time high altitude test baker - call me!)  I would like to have the genius to throw many things in the bowl of My Preciousss confident that it will be good bread, but that is not me.  It never has been and I strongly suspect that it never will.  Even if the bread was delicious, I would pound myself with "what if I had done X or Y - would it be better?" No, better to stay single factor.

 It was 1967 when the classic Star Trek episode "The Trouble with Tribbles" was first broadcast.  As I mentioned before, it was a different time and I was not yet the worldly sophisticate that I am today.  "Quadrotriticale" seemed like a wonderful, fictional, impossible grain of the future.

When I discovered that triticale (trit ih KAY lee) was indeed a real grain, it immediately became my "favorite" for no other reason than it reminded me that the "impossible" could become real.

Despite the advice of my graduate school advisor- "Rules are for suckers" (an attitude which I have always thought accounted for the number of indictments among those who went to the Dear Old Place) I have always been the kind of person who tries to follow the rules.

 Panned loaves (to paraphrase) don't get no respect.

It's the crusty, lean, free standing loaves that we tend to think of when we invoke the term "artisan bread."

But, as others have pointed out - it isn't the bread that should receive the term "artisan" - it is the baker.

 Even in what passes for "normal" in my life, mid-November to the end of December ranges from busy to insanely busy.  There are jams to package, candies to make, and cookies to bake.  Being the designated holder of family culinary traditions, the doing, packaging, and shipping can take on a life of its own.

As the one or two of you who read my blogs know, 2010 hardly started out as a "normal" year.  I had high hopes it would quickly settle to normal. But it was not to be.

 Doesn't mean I don't keep up with the bread, though.

I was away from home and baking for a long time, but now I'm back (at least in the way that I count as being "at home.")

I had the chance to be with one of my oldest friends and some of his friends the other night and it hit me like a ton of bricks that my time in Okinawa had changed me in some pretty profound ways and that I will never be quite the same person ever again.  I think it all came out on the plus side, but the changes are real.

 So why keep baking the same old bread?  So I decided to goose up some of my formulas.

Oh,

for North/Central America

Winner - TEAM USA!!!!!! They ROCK!

 8:30 AM - a full hall to listen to Ciril Hitz talk about laminated pastries and brioche.

Even the professional's heads were reeling with the amount of information Mr. Hitz can pack into a lecture.  We were given a CD with links to Youtube instead of the traditional paper sheets.  There was just that much material...

 After a martoonie or two and an early night, Tuesday  8:30AM found a very large crowd of bakers and imposters ready to listen to Craig Ponsford and Jeffrey Yankellow talk about the science and application of sourdough based pre ferments.  Both seemed somewhat subdued and I was reminded of a quote about folks in another party town who made an early morning appointment.  When they rolled into the restaurant for breakfast they remarked to the waitress that their counterparts were late and they could have used that extra few minutes to gently recover from the previous eveni

Monday 8:30 AM (Hey! This is like work!) saw a room full of bakers and imposters gathered to hear a lecture on commercially yeasted pre ferments from Didier Rosada and Jeffrey Yankellow.

I don't think it is fair, nor do I think it is possible for me to record the entire content of this two and a half hour lecture in this blog.  However, there are some highlights that bear reporting.