Blog posts

Some random bakes

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Hi everyone,

It's been a long time since I've been able to contribute anything to the community here at TFL. Clinic and hospital visits (as a patient) most weekends, some overtime work at my main job and a lot of editing work up until the end of the fiscal year here in Japan have kept me too busy to post anything.

Vermont Bread - The Saga continues

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My training in making sourdough bread continues with growing success. See previous report here. I have followed advice I received on TFL to stick with a recipe that works for me to gain experience and skill. Doing the same recipe over and over again helps me to compare the outcome and learn from it. The recipe is from Home Cooking Adventure: Easy Sourdough Bread - Vermont Bread.

Baker's Math: A tutorial

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In October, 2008 I posted a formula for Greenstein's Jewish Sour Rye which converted his recipe, which was written in volume measurements, to ingredient weights. I have made this bread many times since, but I've never bothered to calculate the baker's percentages for the formula. I decided to do so today and thought I would post the procedures as a tutorial on “baker's math” for new baker's and others who have just never gotten comfortable with this very valuable tool.

Here is the formula I wrote in 2008.

Ingredients

Jewish Sour Rye from Greenstein's "Secrets of a Jewish Baker"

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When I started baking bread again about four years ago, one of my principal reasons was to bake a good Jewish Sour Rye, a favorite bread I could not get locally. Greenstein's Secrets of a Jewish Baker was one of the first bread books I acquired, and I found his Jewish Sour Rye Bread at least as good as any I could remember eating.

Flying Sponge Semolina

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Hi everyone. Even though I have been baking, I haven’t posted in quite awhile. This semolina bread is from Jeffrey Hamelman’s Bread book. It uses a flying sponge which allows the baker to start and finish a bake all in one day. Great for the absentminded who forget to build a levain the night before! A flying sponge uses commercial yeast along with flour and water and ferments for about 75 minutes.

Bagel Class

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Today,   I made a tiny little leap to no where in particular by teaching a small class to make bagels.    Since people (including me) had limited time I did a few practice rounds, taking note of the times, so we could fit in everything, including a potluck lunch, into a 2 hour period.