Blog posts

A couple of weeks back, I met a group of bread bakers in the Kansas City area through thefreshloaf.com. The meeting place was decided to be Barley’s Brewhaus in Shawnee, Kansas. At the meeting, one gentleman by the name of Paul had brought some sourdough starter to share.

Borodinsky using the Auerman Process

Late last week a package arrived for me in the post from Faith, who posts here at TFL.   She had been on a visit to Russia and brought back a tub of Red Rye Malt for both Daisy_A and one for me.

My wife, Alison went out of her way yesterday to buy some Blackstrap Molasses for me to enable me to bake a Borodinsky loaf today.

Here is the detail and formula.

Rye Sour build:

I've recently been baking gluten free bread as a friend has been diagnosed with celiac disease and I finally found a really nice recipe http://www.food.com/recipe/gluten-free-flax-bread-190906

My whole gluten eating family really like this bread, great flavour and can also be used for sandwiches as well as toasting.

I did make a few changes and I also cooked the bread in a dutch oven and found I got much better oven spring in the dutch oven over the pizza stone.

Gluten-Free Flax Bread

It has rained and rained and after a week of soggy grey we finally have a glimmer of sunshine. And with all the rain and cooler temperatures I have really noticed how intertwined my bread making is with the weather. Every feeding and levain build is a unique decision – the balance between the temperature and feed ratios.

I recieved my new delivery from King Arthur Flour the other day so decided to use some of my new ingredients and threw together a sourdough bread with eggs and corn flour (it's supposed to be finer and less gritty than corn meal).  I also decided to add some Barley flour which I find adds a nice nutty flavor to the bread.  The final loaf was a little dense, but overall I was sati

I only joined this site yesterday so I'm still finding my way around.. I did find info and videos about stretch and fold very interesting.

I made some white bread today, just simple white bread flour, yeast, olive oil, a little salt, sugar and milk/water recipe. No measurements, just eyeballed everything.

I used the stretch and fold method of kneading for the first time to see what difference it would make. (by the way I usually have a wettish dough rather than a stiff dough, easier to work and softer bread which hubby and father in law like.)

Wholemeal Options; Wood-fired Baking on 30th January 2012

After the success of Friday’s Farmers’ Market I had no bread in the house; none at all!   I spent a bit of time at the weekend building up my wheat levain and rye sourdough, and looked at my flour stock and decided to make a few loaves with my lovely Marriage’s Organic Strong Wholemeal at the centre of attention.

Back in November http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/25804/whole-wheat-sunday I specified what I want in a sourdough loaf's crumb...

2. Al dente crumb; i.e., when you mash it, it springs back; when you bite it, there is resistance.

This "Swiss" traditions are very diffcult to forget, even after 14 years in the U.S.

And I guess why should we!

Happy Baking

Thomas