Blog posts

Essential's Columbia

Toast

I made Essential's Columbia from my recent purchase Maggie Glezer's Artisan Baking Across America.  I liked the way it turned out and tasted with A/P, W/W, Rye, Wheat Germ. 

Still working on posting!

Pugliese bread from the Lighthouse Bakery

Profile picture for user Juergen Krauss

My wife's christmas present was a baking course at the Lighthouse Bakery, a small bakery focussing on teaching and some wholesale.

We were 4 participants and made some wonderful breads out of 5 different doughs using biga, rye sourdough, sponge, poolish and pate fermentee.

The most surprising and spectacular of the breads we made was the pugliese, which is also the "signature" loaf of the Lighthouse Bakery.

Liz and Rachel, who run the bakery, are happy for the formula to be shared, so here it is:

Pain Au Levain - can't steam the oven too much

Profile picture for user varda

A recent blog post made me sit up and take notice.   http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/22954/getting-grigne-observation shows two loaves; one made with steam at the beginning of the bake, the second steamed later in the process.   The first one looks better by a lot.   Lately I've been making batards with two cuts.   The most frequent outcome is that one of the cuts opens nicely and takes most of the bloom of the loaf, and the second opens a bit, and then seals over.   In trying to diagnose

fol epi - 'wild wheat stalk'

Hello,

Franko kindly referred me to an absolutely lovely bakery in Victoria, BC, called fol epi - 
(fol epi means 'wild wheat stalk').
I had the pleasure of visiting this bakery last month. Thanks Franko! - this place was quite a find!

Slowing Down

Toast

I've been trying to do too much at once.  It occurs to me today that although my sourdough has been going for over a month now, I've yet to really bake anything successful with it (except for the buttermilk cluster, which was an exercise in accidental genius and a lot of time, I think).  The problem is, I'm usually going after recipes that are so wacko or are so much my own creation (throw some spelt in here, whole wheat here, lower hydration, etc) that there are too many variables to tell what the issue is.