Blog posts

I briefly introduced myself this morning in the forums, but here is my longer introduction.

We are taking a day off . YEAH. This is the first one so far.

These two loaves were treated identically through bulk proofing. They were divided into exactly equally portions (737g)  both Preshaped, within 30 secs, rested 15 minutes, shaped, proofed, slashed, and loaded into the oven within one minute of each other.  They were Baked, rotating the loaves positons in the oven--after steaming--and removed within a few seconds of each other.

As you can see in the photographs there is a significant difference in the oven spring realized in each loaf. Three things may have effected the difference.

We had a recipe for Pumpkin and Feta pie on a shortcrust pastry base and thought it would work well on a pizza base (though purists will deem it an abomination!) The topping was a mix of oven roasted butternut squash & whole garlic cloves (squeezed out after roasting) mixed with fried red onions & balsamic vinegar plus feta cheese & chopped rosemary.... all on a hand stretched pizza base.... i'm thinking it would work very well as a starter sized pizzette with some rocket on the side........  it made a very nice change.  Steve

Great thing about baking is that you learn something new with every bake.

This was a 100% Wholewheat boule milled from Red hard spring (I think) Wheat. The wheat was milled too fast too fine, and i found the hard way, that finest stone milling causes starch damage. The results were as this:

This is the Wheat i milled (Hard Red Winter?).Very hard, like durum. I suspect that this wheat is a damaged crop. Frost maybe?

I recently purchased a 25 lb. bag of all trumps flour.  With all this flour on hand, I  wanted to see how it worked for bread.  So I made a loaf of raisin fennel bread.  The texture is lighter; however, the cells look good.  It was worth the try.

Hello to everyone,

I would like to share with you guys my white loaf I baked the other day.

Notes: Crispy crust even after a few hours, nice soft inside, very good lightly toasted as part of a good bruschetta.

Recipe:

Ingredients:

• 1kg flour
• 45g fresh yeast
• 20g salt
• 40gr pork lard
• about 700ml luke warm water

 Method:

This is a very exciting moment.  Many weeks of research and planning have paid off.  My dream of making elegantly curved, crescent-shaped croissants has finally come to fruition.  Along the research process, I’ve consulted sources from American, Chinese, French and Japanese professionals and reviewed several forum and blog entries at TFL about croissants.  If any of my procedures sounds familiar to you, it is probably inspired by your input and I thank you for sharing your experience with our community.

I started this project two weeks ago out of boredom. It started out somewhat...disastrously. Started with 1 cup of water, 1 cup whole wheat flour a pinch of yeast and a pinch of sugar. Life was hunky dory for a couple days until hooch started to form and I realized that perhaps a super watery consistency was not right. After about four days of this, I fed the starter and stuck it in the fridge regardless and then things went...silent. About a week after the starter was stuck in the fridge, it got pulled out and a new feeding regime has begun!

Saturday using Rye Sour excess from an earlier baking--3 or 4 days ago--I built more Rye sour, flollowing Greenstein's Secrets of a Jewish Baker; I did stage 3 feeding late Saturday evening, and refrigerated the refreshed sour intending an early Sunday morning bake.