Blog posts

I've ordered a new mixer.

 I've reached the limit of what I can reasonably expect from my Kitchen Aid Accolade 400. It has served me well, and I've certainly learned a lot using it to mix and knead breads. But I want to mix larger batches of dough. I want to try formulas that demand longer kneading times, higher kneading speeds or both. And I don't need to prove that the Kitchen Aid isn't up to a job by destroying it.

Here are some photos of this weekends bake.

I started off with a sponge being made on Friday night for the cranberry bread.  I used a recipe for Pain Rustique bread with modifications made to it for my purposes.  On Saturday I mixed up the the final dough and let it set while I made a couple bagel sponges

Mixed up Cranberry bread dough.

Dough and bagel sponges

Bagel balls

Finished cranberry bread

Well, I dont want to hijack Erics thread so I figured I would put up a new blog for my latest crazy idea.  Pickled garlic.  Now I know, its not bread, but heh, I had bagels proofing when I got into this so it must count somehow.

Well, if I had had my druthers, I would have been in San Diego for the meet.  After all, I was in Ensenada, which is pretty close.  Compared to Kansas City, that is.  But, no, I couldn’t get away from work for a fun Saturday with other TFL-ers.

Hello everyone,

I have never made the French bread in the BBA, so I thought I'd try it. After trying so many unusual or specialty breads, I wanted to go back to a classic. This version uses pate fermentee (sorry, I'm not conversant enough in HTML or whatever it'd take to include the correct French accent marks), risen a bit at room temperature, then put into the fridge overnight. The dough is made the next day. I did three stretch and fold cycles at 30 minute intervals during a 2-hour fermentation. The proof after shaping was about 50 minutes.

Time for my, what...bi-yearly post, right? (We let Floyd do the bread baking around here.)

Today our daughter turned three and for her birthday she requested a blue pony on her cake.

Here is the cake she got, prior to the three candles being added to the floating clouds.

Chocolate Sourdough

Here is a picture of the Cholocate Chip Sourdough I tried last week. It didn't come out exactly as I'd hoped, but it is was still pretty good. I mean, c'mon.... chocolate.... sourdough... how can you go wrong?