Blog posts

My starter finally kicked into gear yesterday afternoon (started, Sunday 26th, March). It looked ready so I had a go at a lunch loaf. After a nice and quick first rise I shaped the dough and let it sit for a couple of hours before putting in my little proofer thingy. It didn't seem to be going well so I decided I was going to put in the fridge before going to bed. I forgot about it until I was on my way to bed when I noticed it was ready to bake, so on goes the oven at 12:30 at night. I took it out of the oven around 1:30 wrapped it in a tea towel and went to bed.

Pain L'Ancienne is easily one of my favorite breads. I'm applying this technique (delayed fermentation) to the following... 12 oz flour ( 4 semolina, 8 bread ) 10.2 oz ice water 1 tsp instant yeast 1 1/2 tsp salt I'm interested to see the flavor/texture of this method using the 1/3 semolina flour. I went with 85% hydration figuring the semolina will absorb quite a bit of water. I put it together last night, and it's been de-chilling for about an hour, so I plan to bake in another 2-3 hrs. I'll post pics when it's done. I also have a batch of pain sur poolish going just in case:) KP

I’d love to have one but since I don’t… I set out to determine if I could approximate the wood burning brick oven effect by baking the bread in my Cast Aluminum PK charcoal grill. I was hopeful because one of the nice features of the PK is the heat radiating effects of Aluminum. “Aluminum reflects 97% of heat rays

I had a go at baked yeast doughnuts that were not very good. The baguette here is from some dough left in the fridge on Sunday and baked Friday, it was not good. Today I thought I'd have a crack at a chocolate sponge roll using the recipe from my cake class I missed last Thursday. The roll didn't work out so I cut it in half and stacked it with some cream in the middle.

I've been making Sourdough breads for a couple months now from a culture I started myself with water and unbleached flour. The original inspiration and methodology came from OUTLAW COOK by John Thorne. There are two great bread chapters in the book: An Artisanal Loaf and One Loaf Three Ways. The former explores the mystery and delight of making bread from nature, the latter gives practical instruction.

This is just a draft; I have yet to try it. Using the amounts in brackets should theoretically make one loaf with approximately 70g fibre.

I started today with a generic sponge that I used to make my standard white loaf & baguette, flax seed plait and some choc-chip hot cross buns. I wasn't sure at first if it was going to work out today trying a sponge and bulk ferment. So no bread improver and less yeast than usual. I started mixing the sponge at 12:30 and the first loaf was into the oven at 4:00. Now that I'm using two cast iron trays on the bottom of the oven to which I add a tray of ice between them, I'm getting a very nice bloom. Despite the ugliness of the buns they were quite nice.

There's just something satisfying about eating a sandwich on bread you've made yourself. Soft, delicious bread. A sense of accomplishment. Anyone can go to the store and buy bread, and sometimes even more cheaply than I can make it for (I don't want to think about how much I spent in molasses on my last pumpernickel). It's funny, because not that long ago, it would have been completely commonplace to eat your own bread. We've become a society so dependent on having others do things for us. I'm a woodworker, and there's a similar satisfaction to working with tools you've made yourself.

Well, again. It's time to update my blog on what i've been up to.. :P A few days ago, i decided to try an italian chestnut flour i purchased some time ago. So i made a chestnut bread with 15% WW & rye. Here's it - Today,well...actually about an hour ago, we just had a lil green coloured indian crepe called 'Pesarattu', and fish curry (which was actually fish carcass...but still with quite an amount of meat & plenty filling).

Well I had ordered a sourdough started from the friends of Carl a while back and never got around to activating it. So I got a coupla containers over the weekend and activated it according to the book Classic Sourdough by Ed Wood,( 7pm) well it took off incredibly fast.....but there was a layer of hooch in the middle by morning. So around 9:30am I decided to wash it also according to the book, by 11am it had risen 1 1/2" and was still on the rise, we went away and when we returned home aroung 4 in the afternoon it had risen a good 2".