Blog posts

 Even in what passes for "normal" in my life, mid-November to the end of December ranges from busy to insanely busy.  There are jams to package, candies to make, and cookies to bake.  Being the designated holder of family culinary traditions, the doing, packaging, and shipping can take on a life of its own.

As the one or two of you who read my blogs know, 2010 hardly started out as a "normal" year.  I had high hopes it would quickly settle to normal. But it was not to be.

 Doesn't mean I don't keep up with the bread, though.

Hello, I really love Rose's walnutty-oniony bread. I found a maple-veined cheese a few years ago and it paired amazingly well with this walnut bread! Any good cheese is great with this bread though.  This is a 69% hydration loaf using milk, with the addition of some roasted walnut oil. I like to substitute shallots for onions; I like their nice pink color and great flavor.  Regards, breadsong

Hello, Here is an attempt at the Pear Buckwheat Bread from Advanced Bread and Pastry by Mr. Michel Suas.
What a wonderful book!!!!
The shaping instructions for this bread can be found here (thank you Susan!):
http://www.wildyeastblog.com/2010/01/31/pear-buckwheat-bread/

This is the next in a series of blog posts, regarding my quest to reproduce Acme Bakery's Walnut Levain. See:

previous post

and

original post

I think I'm pretty much there. My loaf is quite large now, because we like it. There are two preferments, one "old dough" (yeast raised) and one a sour sponge for flavor. The loaf itself is basically yeast raised.

Day 0, Evening

Sour Sponge:

Thanksgiving day 2010

Rotisserie barbecued turkey (okay, so it's not bread)

Glenn (on the left) meets turkey (on the right). 

Day after Thanksgiving breakfast

 I'm sure that many of TFL members remember the recipe -http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/15778/g%C3%A9rard-rubaud-miche submitted by Shiao-Ping. 

On November I was experimenting with the recipe-changing flours, adjusting time of proofing and fermentation.

Whole Grain Miche

Pain au Levain with Red Fife Whole Wheat Flour

This was my first time to use oven to bake bread (before used bread machine). I had been wanting to try the no-knead bread receipe since it came out in 2006.

I followed the original receipe but tuned it to suit my case. Since my order of the digital scale hasn't arrived, I could only use volume to measure the quantities:

• 3 Cup flour (2 AP + 1 WW)
• 1 5/8 tsp salt
• 3/8 tsp active dry yeast (direct into the mix)
• 1 5/8 Cup filtered water

After mixing, it looked pretty sloppy.

What a mouthfull of a title and what and what a mouth full of a bread

I have recently made a very nice Dark Irish Stout and retained the dregs from the bottom of the fermenter. The stout has just been sampled with  a very big tick of approval it was a very vigourous brew and performed very well indeed. i took 250 grams of stoneground wholemeal flour and added 250mls of my brewery sludge  and bought it together and set it aside as a soaker.

Plain sourdough is not something I make often, though I intended to  but I seems to easily get distracted by multigrain and/or fruit breads. Somehow, I feel like one last weekend and I picked the Pain au Levain with whole wheat from jeffrey Hamelman's Bread cookbook.