Blog posts

Every now and then you learn a new technique in the kitchen that really knocks your socks off.  Tangzhong is one of them.

Tangzhong

Tangzhong is the technique of heating a portion of the flour and liquid in your recipe to approximately 65C to make a paste (roux).  At this temperature the flour undergoes a change (gelatinizes?).  Adding this roux to your final dough makes a huge difference in the softness and fluffiness of your final dough.

Three weeks ago I volunteered to bake bagels for a party. Though, not just ordinary bagels. Sourdough based bagels, with a spicy twist, featuring characteristics of a pretzel---or what I call "pregels".

Visualize this: A doughnut---but not a doughnut---that's as chewy as a bagel, but has a crispy, lustrous, dark brown crust, sparsely topped with coarse sea salt. (I can almost hear bagel purists hollering abomination.)

I finally got around to making Eric's Rye Bread.  I've been wanting to try out this formula ever since I saw it posted here on TFL.  It is a wonderfully fragrant loaf of rye with sourdough, onions and caraway.  I sauteed two medium sized onions in about 2 TBSP of olive oil and added them to the final dough along with all the other ingredients.  The dough smelled sooo good even before it was baked.  The bread is light and fluffy.  I baked the second loaf about 10 minutes more for a total of 50 minutes since it was a 2 lb.

Today was a big day ... um ... no, it was so much bigger than that ... um ... i'm not even sure if I can put into words the anticipation I have felt for today.

... and all for a tiny little fire that we allowed to burn for only an hour or so.

The black granite stone has been installed at the mouth of the oven and Dennis has constructed a wonderful door from recycled timber (and a bit of high tech ceramic wool and steel)

My apprentice says that sane German bakers don’t usually try to do a pumpernickel style bake of; slowly reducing low temperatures over a long baking time, when baking white bread of any kind.  But, I figured that if professional bakers can call a bread with only 25% to 30% of rye flour in it a rye bread, then we should be able to DaPumperize a white bread too.  

Thank you all for the excellent articles and posts on Larraburu french bread. As a former Bay Area native I grew up with Larraburu bread and loved it. I make my own bread and starter. Does anyone know of a source for the original Larraburu starter. One of the bloggers described a cold storage area where they had it stored.  I would be very interested to get a sample if it is available.

Thanks,

Michael

Last week, I had some left over whole spelt flour, some corn meal, and some semolina in addition to a ripe Rye starter. Therefore, I decided to put them all to use in a new recipe as follows:

UPDATE** INSTRUCTIONS:

I've been experimenting with beer bread and granary style bread. For this round I used a doppelbock along with some stuff labeled malt powder that I got at my local Korean grocery store. I tried it with WW flour as is included in a lot of recipes, but I felt like it was competing with the malt powder, so this one is just AP flour, plus what's in my starter.

After returning from the first ever TFL gathering in Lexington MA last weekend I wanted to use some the rye starter that Varda gave me to make a rye bread.  Dave Snyder posted his latest bake of the above bread on The Fresh Loaf this past week and pushed me over the edge to try it myself.  You can find the recipe at his original post

This is the result of my weeks of practice making baguettes. I posted a question in the forum and thanks to everyone who provided help. I have finally nailed down the problem and have made 3 consistant good batches. Turned out my problem is not only at scoring, but also the fermentation time, my oven temp,  and steaming duing baking.