July is the hottest month of the year in Fresno. For the past couple years, since I retired from practice, we have tried to get to cooler areas for as much of the month as possible. Being away from home more than usual, I do less baking than usual in July.
My baking for the first half of July has had an Italian theme.
In a recent blog about Lessons in Baking I ended by stating “perhaps that is the most important lesson of the day – that with practice and sticking to plan, one can duplicate over and over again what they create.”
Dear TFLers,
Earlier this month, I have taken artisan II sourdough classes at the San Francisco Baking Institute. Upon my arrival, I contacted David Snyder (dmsnyder) who offered to pick me and my friend from the Hotel next morning. As blogged by David, we parked in the city, and walked up to the ferry building , where the Saturday’s Farmer’s Market was located, and there, we met David’s brother Glenn, (also a TFL member).
I made a test run of ciabatta that I will be making for a party in a few weeks. Overall I'm pleased with the results. Here is what I did and what I would change the next time.
Took 25g of my No Muss No Fuss starter (spelt whole grain I grind) and made 30% starter in one fell swoop- 500g flour, KABF and Semolina, and the same water. Left it for 16 hours on the counter.
5lbs KABF
2.2lbs Semolina from this mix I took 500 g for the starter
Water 80%
Salt 2.5%
CY 1.3%
That magic moment when you take off the lids and you know you did not screw it up!
Straight white Biga commercial yeast formula from Forkish, with 50% more salt because it tastes, and toasts, better.
Outside should be slightly crunchy, with a sweet light crumb. The bread will age nicely over 3 or 4 days, getting slightly sour by the end of it.... if it lasts that long.
Each loaf is about 950 grams.
And the wife brought home a fresh block of butter from the store, and I made Blackberry jam yesterday... yum!
I've been working on establishing a rye starter. I used dark rye at 100% hydration seeded with a little of my wheat SD starter. It has been bubbling away for a couple of weeks spending some it's time in the refrigerator. I have been using it in addition with my regular starter, but hadn't yet tried it on it's own. So today I decided to try a loaf of rye bread using just my rye starter. I have made rye bread before, mostly with instant yeast and once with my wheat starter, but this is the first time using just the rye starter.
Greetings, my fellow TFL'ers!
I've been a silent reader here for quite some time. I've never posted anything here because I've always felt that there is a long way to go before my posts qualify to take up TFL's space. Nevertheless, I've been trying to learn every bit from the beautiful bread recipes .....ooops! formulae here. Every post here is worthy of being bookmarked.
I hadn't baked for a while and decided to make Field Blend # 2 form K. Forkish's FWSY.
I prepared the levain using 100g active rye sourdough starter and used Red Fife flour instead of the wholewheat.
Then I realized that the recipe calls for only 360g of the levain, and that 640g would be discarded.
Dang! As others said this sounds incredibly wasteful. So I thought of using the 640g of leftover levain.
It had risen nicely over 7 hours or so and looked almost like a poolish.
Hi, There i'm starting new Artisan bakery in Abu Dhabi soon will be open unfortunately we have lost one 20 f container of some of the best flours Organic grindstone Rye, Spelt, Wholewheat from the UK, i'm searching for such product in the UAE until i receive my next shipment so not to delay the opining
All our bread will be backed in wood fired ovens imported from Franc and we will start teach classes in the very near future
We are also looking for some good bread lovers to work for us.
So, the Little Woman keeps nagging like a parrot "how about making some ciabatta, how about making some ciabatta" The only thing missing is the "aawk" squeal at the end. Sheesh!!! Okay, okay already.
