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Auvergne Rye Baguette with Bacon

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Also known as Baguette aux lardons.

 

This is fabulous bread!  I baked it yesterday from Daniel Leader’s new book, Local Breads.  It is a very easy recipe, absolutely delicious fresh from the oven and today it made incredible toast.  The incorporation of slightly browned bacon and his recommendation to retard the shaped loaves overnight to infuse the dough with more of that great smoky bacon flavor is a winner.

Thom Leonard's Country French

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I'm posting this recipe for discussion as we have been talking about it on the Glezer firm starter thread.  I have made this bread often with variations because I did not have the high-extraction flour yet.  I recently purchased the Golden Buffalo flour from Heartland Mill in Kansas and it was superb.  I didn’t take photos of those so will next time I make it.

 

Rustic bread, Potato Pizza, and an exciting prospect for this coming semester

Toast

So for the second time this summer, I moved this past weekend. I decided to given my oven a test run just to get a feel for it. First, I baked a bunch of 75% hydration rustic loaves with ~20% whole wheat. The dough was built on a 12 hr poolish. I usually don't use such a high percent of whole wheat flour and as a result the bread tasted a bit earthier than mine usual pain sur poolish. Oven performed well; it only got up to 450F, which was just enough.

 

And in this corner...

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Weighing in at 2 pounds 8 ounces, is the mega semonlina loaf. semolina bread semolina bread This was a sourdough w/ a half a teaspoon of instant yeast thrown in. About... 65% hydration with about 40% of the flour semolina. It turned out pretty good. I've been meaning to mention that I have been using the Steam Maker Bread Kit when I bake something like this.

White thyme bread

Toast
I have been wanting to make the White thyme bread from Dan Lepard's "The art of handmade bread", and today was the day. I bought some fresh thyme last week at the farmer's market but didn't buy olives until this last Friday. Naturally the store didn't have the picholine olives this week, so I bought kalamatas because all of the others had "stuff" in them. DL calls for fresh yeast which I have never seen here and although he gives a way to replace it I decided to use my instant yeast along with the starter and it worked just fine.

whole wheat

Toast
Well I made the most amazing  4 loaves of whole wheat bread today. It was quite hot out and I was expecting company so I decided to turn on the air conditioning. I then realized it would be better for the bread if I had a warmer and more humid environment so I placed the rising dough out on the patio under the umbrella and covered with a damp towel.  That must have been a perfect scenario for the bread because it rose like crazy. I also think it had something to do with the actual recipe.

Making pizza

Toast

I haven't been making bread much lately so I decided to start again with pizza dough. I didn't have the time to let it rise as much as I wanted but it came out really well regardless. The dough was much slacker than I have done in the past and that's why it turned out so wonderfully this time.

Rising dough:

Pizza dough

Ready to form crusts:

Ears!

Toast
For the first time in my entire baking life I got ears!!! OK, they aren't the most elegant ears I have ever seen, but for me this was a big deal. I made Susan's Norwich Sourdough loaves and nearly ruined the dough by trying to knead in kosher salt by hand. Had to do some extra kneading and stretching and folding to get the dough to what I thought it should be, and eventually it was a delight to work with. So my four dear little loaves weren't picture perfect but to me they are beautiful. Made pizza with some of the leftover dough, and also baked a fine steelcut oats version of the NKB.

circular cooling rack

Toast
KipperCat, a friend of mine asked me whether I could remember seeing a round cooling rack on TFL - she saw it and couldn't remember where. I went back through some blog entries and noticed that you have one. Could you tell me where you got it, please? I am assuming that is the one she meant and she really really wants one. I led her astray into the breadmaking world and she says she may never forgive me - but she is making sourdough bread with my starter. I would love to put her on the right track for the rack, many thanks, A