Blog posts

Today 11 March is the first anniversary of the Tohoku earthquake/tsunami/nuclear disaster. On the island I live on people gathered at a beach this morning in remembrance. Our beaches were closed by the tsunami warnings last year and of course there have been a series of major earthquakes in Christchurch - we identify with the people of Japan.

Hello,

Here was some rolls I made today.   I started with a poolish because I did not want any sour at all, and dumped a bunch of real sugar, honey, butter and milk into it.    Came out great, and these are very tasty.

The recipe I did:

Poolish:

140 grams whole-grain flour mix (I did a mixture of WW + rye)
167 grams white bread flour
338 grams whole milk
0.6 grams instant yeast

Final Dough:

Country Loaf with Mixed Grains & Seeds

This pound cake or tea cake with truly worth making.

http://www.bonappetit.com/recipes/2012/03/black-sesame-pear-tea-cake

This is the time of year when I adjust, test, convert and create reicpes and formuale. I have no doubt that many cookbook authors lurk these pages, and this rant is, respectfully aimed at you or your publishers, or both.

We all know that scaling ingredients is the way to go, yet most books, and internet recipes etc. insist on providing volume measurements. Some might say this is old... The topic of weight of flour has been discussed ad nauseum here and many other places. Knowing what a cup of flour SHOULD weigh in no way helps in converting recipes.

For those of you who have not read it, Mr. Hamelman blogged quite movingly about how the fraternity of bakers who had participated in La Coupe du Monde de la Boulangerie became and remained friends despite their positions as competitors.

Greetings everybody!
Today was 'Fundraiser Day' at the Back Home Bakery in Kalispell, MT with all of the profits from the sale benefiting  the Flathead High School French Club.   A small crew of high school students worked the final shift baking, packaging, and delivering croissants, palmiers, and pains au chocolat for their happy customers.

I have a new, unused Baparoma Steam Baking Master pan that is still wrapped in the original shrink-wrap (never opened).  The recipe and use and care cards are wrapped and unopened.  The instruction book is included.  I am asking $60 and buyer pays shipping.  It is about 5 lbs to ship.  They are hard to find and this one is mint.

I have not made rolls in a while, so I figured it was time to give it a go.  I was going to make some straight onion rolls from the recipe in Inside the Jewish Bakery by Stanley Ginsberg and Norman Berg, but I decided to try something a little different.  I used the onion topping recipe from the book and created a nice soft dough using some smooth style ricotta, whole eggs a