Blog posts

I've always admired immigrants, folks who, for love or opportunity, pull up their roots and start over.  This summer we've been going through what has to be the easiest immigration process possible -- same language, same geographic region, very similar culture, no questions of about citizenship or difficulty finding employment -- and still... it has been a tremendous amount of work.  I can't even imagine how much work it must be when the obstacles are larger or the circumstances less fortunate.

Scoring hearth loaves made with high hydration doughs is a challenge. Expressions of frustration with this in TFL postings are not rare. Much good advice regarding how to accomplish nice scoring of wet, sticky dough has been offered, but it is scattered. So, I thought I would share my own advice on this subject in one place.

I just returned from a couple of days vacation visiting Newport Rhode Island.  We had a great time visiting the shops, historic mansions and sailing the harbor.

I wanted to make some rolls/buns that we could use for hamburgers for today's lunch and I didn't have time to refresh my starters so I used some instant yeast for the first time in a long time.

I'd tried the sourdough route before and had to quit.  The main reason, I think, is because I keep my thermostat at 60 degrees Fahrenheit, and I had a hard time creating a proper environment for the starter and the bread dough.  Brod and Taylor to the rescue!  I didn't have to rig up a styrofoam ice chest with an electric light bulb.  I just had to order the box that you can set at any temperature between 70 and 120 (1 degree increments).

Sending this to Yeastspotting.

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 By now, you all know that I never get bored with 36 hour sourdough baguettes, just keep making and eating them -- with a bit of variation each time

After the fiasco of the previous bake still haunting, we decided to give this formula another go to see if we could figure out what caused the explosive proofing in fridge during the last bake.

We decided to cut back on the YW from 75 g to 50 g added 10 g multi-grain SD starter.  But the biggest change was to cut back on the yogurt whey to 46 g from 155 g in the previous bake.

I just ran across http://www.localgrain.org/csa, and have signed up for a share. I'm excited to try out some of the heirloom wheats. More info in December when I pick it up.

Whenever I make bread my main goal is volume. Admittedly this isn't the most rewarding feature of bread but I am a technical junkie and love taking things to the limit. Not to mention, I love super-light bread.

This loaf is somewhat akin to the improved loaf I made a few months ago but uses acidity from sourdough to boost volume. Milk and diastatic malt are used to soften the crumb.