stu currie's blog

these are my first attempt at making English muffins and I must admit, I'm really really pleased with them. The recipe is from tartine by chad robertson.

For those of you who don't own that book, the recipe is a baguette dough that you flatten out on a baking sheet and then let rise like that, I used a 3 inch cookie cutter to cut them out, and then fried them in a little clarified butter for a couple of minutes on each side.

Even my daughter likes them...success!!

I had loads of starter left over from my loaf this weekend. I'm still getting used to how much starter I need to keep for the amount I bake. My 3 yr old daughter absolutely demolishes anything with chocolate or hazelnuts, or brioche, so i thought this was a good idea. Anybody who has children will not be surprised to learn, that despite the fact she adores every ingredient in these, they're definitely poison and she won't go near them, because I'm the worst person in the world.

This is today's bake. I got the recipe from sourdough by Sarah owens. It's a really good book if you haven't read it, the best thing about it is the fact that she provides loads of recipes to use leftover starter,  so you don't have as much waste.

This is my first attempt at sourdough. It's just a plain loaf proofed for about 20 hours in a round banneton, then adjusted a little bit to make a more rectangular shape. I was a little bit disappointed with the oven spring, but I think that was because I didn't leave my Dutch oven to heat up for long enough,  Because i was getting a little impatient. Other than  that  I'm very happy with it.

Please let me know what you think, criticism more than welcome, also, would I be better buying a rectangular banneton, or is it fine to adjust the shape just before baking?

this was my attempt at fwsy white loaf with 80% biga. The taste and crumb are wonderful, I'm just so disappointed with the oven spring. The loaf on the left was proved in an ova, banneton and just flattened out horribly, the baguette in the middle was lovely so I ate most of that before I remembered to take pictures. The loaf on the right, I did in a round banneton. Apart from the rise on it I'm very happy. I will try again but because it's so wet, I may just continue with the white bread with poolish as my go to recipe.

This was my attempt at baguettes and barms .  I used the basic white loaf with a poolish from fwsy. I know the baguettes don't look great, but I'm quite proud of them. I really need to get better at scoring my loaves. Other than that I love my new hobby.