Blog posts

Baking and other October News

Rendered my first ever batch of leaf lard, and baked 2 loaves of white bread with it........I will never use butter or store bought lard again.....cant wait to use it in a pie crust. Such a simple thing to do, a little hard to find mind you, but well worth the foot work. If you're interested in making your own lard, here is how I did it!

3 pounds of leaf lard

1/2 cup of water

Hi

I am prettty new to baking, i have only been doing it since about January of this year. I am still learning the ins and outs and all the little secrets of making a decent loaf.

Please have a look at some of the loafs that I have here and let me know what you think. I am very open to feedback.

Thanks

Allan

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Formula

Sending this to Yeastspotting.

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This weekend produced a sourdough with candied orange peel, cranberries and pecans, and rye sourdough crackers.

It seems that days and weeks really flies lately and I don't have enough time to write about all the breads I bake. To get upto date, I'll make a resume with the most important breads I've baked in the last days/week:

Not much novel in my baking life lately.  

Last weekend I tried bagels using 50% Type 85 flour and 50% High-gluten white flour (Sir Lancelot).  The results were ok, but not as good as my previous formula (75% High-gluten flour and 25% bread flour).  These were too extensible (could have lowered the hydration with the lower gluten flour blend) and the ends didn't want to cohere.  The flavor was nice, but I think I'll stick with the proven recipe.

This was going to be a blow-by-blow account of reviving a starter that had been dried for travel.  Yeah, my eyes are starting to glaze already, too.  So this will get more of a Readers Digest treatment.  And I'll try to stay awake until the end.  What you do is up to you.

Here's the back story: Man lives in Pretoria, South Africa.  Man has sourdough starter.  Man will repatriate to his home in Kansas City.  Man does not wish to lose his starter or begin a new one after his return.

Still with me?  Good.