Blog posts

Oh, not to TFL.

It was only a week ago that I bid farewell to Okinawa and "my" Marines.  Yes, I was working with the Marines - other details must remain fuzzy, but this one is pretty much out in the open now. It still cuts a little too close to the bone to think about those fine young men and women each one ready and willing to fight "in every clime and place where (they) can take a gun."  War is a terrible thing - but the dedication of these Marines is something for which all US citizens should be grateful.

Hi all,

After a great laptop-and-internet-free vacation the last couple of weeks, I've now pulled my starter out of its refrigerator retirement and given it a couple of feedings to get it back to its former self. The first couple of loaves I've baked after coming back, have been some pain au levains with toasted seeds. This bread is based on my pain au levain formula with slightly increased whole-flour amount, and roughly 7.5% - 10% toasted seeds. You'll find a copy of the formula here (written for 7.5% toasted seeds).

Today's bread was Dutch Crunch. I had never heard of it before and although I've only been baking bread for about 2 to 3 months now, it was pretty simple. Unfortunately, with a late start, the bread came out of the oven after everyone was in bed. (They went to bed early - not that I bake at ungodly hours). It's such a bummer when you can't have *someone* enjoy your bread as soon as it's ready or at least the same day. Oh well, I enjoyed it immensely...crunchy and slightly sweet crust, soft and fluffy crumb. So good.

I'm excited to have this book. I see so many on TFL using it. This seems to be a popular bread so I thought I would give it a go.

Used the book instructions to the letter except I mixed by hand, which I will say, was quite the task with this dough.

I'm happy with the bread out of the oven and it smells as good or better than any bread I have baked. Be back with a crumb and taste update after a bit.

I needed cracked rye berries to do my first bake from "Bread" by Jeffrey Hammelmann. All I could find were whole berries so here's what I did. First I froze the berries for about an hour, then a bit at a time, pulsed them in a coffee grinder, ran them through a strainer and kept saving the big pieces.

Made a big mess also. Got my version of cracked rye berry.

A few Months ago, SteveB posted his work using Tahini in a bread to improve the flavor of sesame. His post on Breadcetra can be found here. As usual Steve does a great job detailing the procedure and makes a wonderful bread.

Hello dear friends....really i missed you all ...here I am..sharing with you my latest bakes...Eid al fitr will be tomorrow..I was preparing for it one week ago may be more I had a lot of work...I baked 55 kilos of these goodies for some customers, for friends, and of course for us at home....It was too hard for me i am tired, ill, and need really a long vacation...but the most thing made me feel better that the people really loved it called me back to thank me and told me that they never tasted such great cookies before.

Here's one of those quick bread recipes that pops out of my folder when I see burstingly fresh zucchini at the produce stand. It's adapted from a recipe that's been passed around in my family as 'Doris Fenton's Zucchini Bread' for donkey's years and so, when I lightened up the oil and tweaked the quantities to suit, it only seemed fair to carry on the name.

Hello everybody!!! It's been a long time since my last post!!!!!

Here I wanna show you this way of making bread...

I got some cancelation on my daily program. And I was without any pre-ferment what so ever!!!!

Then I decided to mix all the flour water yeast and a bit of malt (70, 2 and .2 %) and let ferment for at least 5 hours. A long time. I could have done a pre-ferment I know lol...

After this time I put into the dough the salt and a bit of ascorbic acid, since due to the long fermentation the dough was laking in strength.