Blog posts

Cat and I spent the week of 3/3 through 3/10 on an expedition on the waters and islands around Southern Baja California.  It was a glorious trip, with great up-close encounters with marine mammals and other local fauna.

My camera was busy trying to capture some sense of the wonderful natural world we experienced.

The Holy Island of Lindisfarne, Northumberland. UK.

18th March 2012

David Snyder and I were enjoying a conversation in his thread on his lovely baking of last weekend.   See here, there are 3 comments to read:

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/27810/last-weekends-breads#comment-208809

I'm a beginning baker. I started baking my own bread for a few reasons. One reason is that I like baking. I enjoy being able to produce something home-made. Another is that I hate spending $3-4 on a decent loaf of bread. I knew that I could learn to make good bread myself, given some time and effort. It would be cheaper, and taste better, than anything I could buy.

Hello --- and Happy St. Patrick’s Day, everyone :^)

I am going to my Mother's house for lunch tomorrow to visit with some of my relatives and wanted to bring some nice rolls for lunch.  I decided to start off with a basic Challah recipe and made some modifications to make it interesting.  I used durum semolina flour along with bread flour, spelt flour and barley flakes.  I also used some agave nectar instead of white sugar to add som

My daughter has a sorority sister in from CA staying with us this weekend and I wanted to make something she and my daughter  probably have never been fortunate to taste before.  This weeks ITJB bake is Babka so I thought I would give it a try - with a few twists and not just twisting the dough - which I also did.  This babka leans Polish but besides being leavened with minneola / apple yeast water,  in place of a coiled loaf - I used a Bundt pan.  In place of cake crumbs, I used a almond, vanilla, granola streusel.

Hello and Happy St. Patrick’s Day everyone!

Breakfast was a real treat today...what a pleasure to discover Irish Soda Bread :^)

Bread from my wood-fired brick oven, made 15th/16th March 2012

A few weeks ago I found an excellent sourdough website created by Teresa Greenway and saved a few recipes to add to my future bake list.  I finally decided to give one a try and baked her recipe for an Alaskan Sourdough bread.  This bread is slightly sweet similar to a shepherder's bread.  The overall bread is 67% hydration and uses some interesting ingredients like evaporated milk.

After practicing daily with my six-string braiding crutch

Today I built and baked a six-strand challah

Nailed the braiding, but I hadn't expected (hadn't thought it through) how big this loaf would turn out: it's resting on a 17" drying rack.