Blog posts

I had reported with shock that my tap water had chloramines in it.  The spring water was behaving more like reverse osmosis water, so I'd started using tap water.  Mike Avery's plaint about his overly-soft tap water got me curious and I inquiried of our public works director about our water.  He said that due to the distance it travels from its source (from the Sacramento Delta to Morro Bay, a couple hundred miles at least and not what I'd consider a positive environmental situation), its treatment produces long-lasting chloramines.  Mike asked me to try making a starter

The tests results are in! (It takes so little to make me happy.)

This particular batch of wheat was tempered for 48 hours with 20% of water added by weight of the grain.

It was then ground as follows

1 – Coarse pass sifted through #20 sieve – contents of sieve returned to mill

2 – Medium coarse pass sifted through a #20 sieve – contents of sieve returned to mill

3 – Medium coarse pass sifted through a #20 sieve – contents of sieve removed from process.  This was about 20% of total weight

After preparing for it all of last week, feeding my sourdough daily with mash to make it a Monica Spiller-type barm, I finally made "Whole Wheat Barm Bread 2008", from the recipe that Monica Spiller recently published.

Nature seems to have granted me an abundance of patience and in the past few weeks I have been undertaking experiments that seem destined to use it.

I have been wondering why my levain – which given the way I feed it should be dead by now – lives, thrives, and raises bread every week.  I have also been wondering about the results of soaking my home milled overnight prior to a mix and bake.

Now that we're back on land, I'm really enjoying my BIG home galley!     The picture below is of Almost Ko-Knead, which is a huge improvement over the original NKB!   Baked this loaf in my Romertopf clay baker and it turned out perfect . . . well, except for the slashing!  Anyone have suggestions on how to 'slash' NKB?   

Galley Wench's Almost No-Knead

Our daughter was here for a visit this week, and together we pushed our boundaries with regard to baking.

First, we had home-made pizza using previously frozen dough from the boule recipe in AB in 5. This was new for her, but not for me.

We next mixed a new recipe of the same dough, so that she could shape a loaf, and see what a time saver it is. Another use of the same dough was pitas for lunch. A first for both of is, and easy to do. I’ll make those again.

She wanted to do bagels next, so she used Floyd’s recipe, to be found here. Excellent.

My old new love KAM, is cursed. Or so it seems.

He committed suicide 2 weeks ago, by walking himself off the kitchen bench whilst mixing dough.

I finally had him replaced and on the second use the height adjustment was somehoiw altered and just scraped the bowl so hard that the protective white covering of the dough hook scraped clean off.

The bowl seems alright. A few scratches, on the bottom, but seemed enough to mix up another batch of dough (as I threw out the now contaminated dough in the bowl) which the paddle attachment.

Janedo's Basic Bread

Janedo's Basic Bread Crumb

Sourdough baguettes - crumb

Sourdough (mini) baguettes

I made my own version of sourdough baguettes.