Blog posts

Baked my second sourdough ever yesterday, and I couldn't be happier with the results.

I used the 1-2-3 Method described by Shiao-Ping at Sourdough Companion. I was persuaded by its simplicity--no traditional recipe to follow, just a ratio.

The starter was a 50% hydration that had sat in the back of my fridge totally untouched for at least 5 months. It was based on Reinhart's starter formula in BBA; after a single failure of a loaf, I pushed it behind the mayo and forgot about it while pursuing other projects.

I have been focusing on sourdough to the exclusion of all other breadmaking since May.  I finally decided to make Kaiser Rolls from "bread baker's apprentice." by Reinhart.  This is the first recipe I made when I started trying to become a better "artisan" baker.  We spent a month in Austria in 2006 and loved the bread over there so much that I got this cookbook.  I picked it because of the many good shaping pictures.  I knew I could make good tasting bread but I wanted to move on in my technique to well-shaped bread too.

I did it: finally found a way of resolving a couple of oven problems and made a nice loaf of whole wheat bread from Leader's book. 

This 4th of July the party at my house was my kid's party! As I looked out across my yard at these adults that I watched grow I thought about how independent they are! My son a C.P.A. and my daughter graduating next year from college and already doing her internship. Frank, my son's friend since playschool, working in accounting, living in Philadelphia. He has a really sweet girlfriend and I must say I am proud of him! Ray is on his way to Law School already has a degree in accounting. He also is living in Philadelphia! I am proud of him!

  Calzone "Wood Fired" of course! Mmmm...

Bread Adventures in July [finally edited to include a few pictures, and remove the original apologetic whingeing!]

This academic year seems to have gone on longer than any I can previously remember.   I still have a few assignments to mark for late submitting Hospitality students...maybe I should be getting that out of the way this weekend?   However I thought it would be more fun to write up the detail of the breads I've been making this month instead!

We've seen it before - a person goes "missing" on TFL.

But I'm still out here and kicking. Just not baking.

My time in Okinawa "morphed" just a bit and I'm still commuting across the Pacific.  I've already survived earthquakes and tsunamis and now am looking forward (not) to typhoon season.  It's a beautiful place, but it has a lot of ways to kill you (won't even mention the snakes, spiders, and cone shells -oops, I did...)

I was wondering if anyome has a fromula for the Spanish pan de orno? I have found some vague references to it, but not any solid formulas. Please help!

Ryan