Blog posts

Perchè fare il Pane in casa? I motivi sono tanti......

Adoro il Pane, sono felice quando lo impasto, quando lo mangio e soprattutto quando lo condivido.

Questa tipologia di Pane è spesso sulla mia tavola, di facile ed appassionante esecuzione, consistenza e complessità di aromi straordinari.

http://ilchiccoelaspiga.blogspot.it/2014/12/la-spiga-francese.html

A presto, Anna

I just returned from the annual Thanksgiving pilgrimage to North Carolina and needed to make some bread.  I refreshed my trusty AP starter and decided to incorporate some of my freshly milled and sprouted whole wheat flour with some Durum flour and some good old KAF Bread flour.

The results are in and this one is a keeper.  A nice moist and open crumb with the nutty taste of Durum along with the unique flavor of the Sprouted Whole Wheat really makes this one worth baking and eating.

Well, it's been almost 6 months since I last baked any bread.  I made some pizzas during that time, but no bread.  The hot summer months just curb the motivation to get the oven on for hours.  The itch to bake bread got almost as unbearable as all that store bought bread.

So I'm going to attempt to post more frequently, assuming my kids allow me the free time and I can get the photos to post. (As I type this the baby just knocked over my cup of coffee across the table)

hello everyone it's been awhile since my last post but I've still been baking 3-5 loaves a week and have been having more consistent results and I was quite happy with this bake. The formula was fairly simple:

I started the Levain with 20g active and ripe starter, fed 10g of my mother mix (80% AP, 15% WW, 5% RYE) and 10g H2O, then about 6 hrs later fed again 20g mix and 20g h20 and was left to rest until doubled (about 4 more hours).

After a long absence from baking due to visitors, travel and so on, I have gotten away from baking my own bread. With the winter months and some insanely cold weather in these parts it seemed like a good time to fire the oven up. I used 2 Tbs of dehydrated onion and enough water to make the dough plus some which will get absorbed. the soaking water was used in the dough -- of course! As I am in a very dry environment I upped the hydration to 70% and used a little more egg than recommended, but this dough made great tasting buns and was a dream to work.

The nights are getting colder here, my thoughts have been turning to overnight outdoor proofing schemes. 
For this bread, I started with a 45 min. autolyse, then minimal machine mixing in stages. The bulk  ferment was in the five hour range.
The loaves spent the night, seam down in baskets, and coved up inside of a large plastic box outside in the cold.
Outside the temp. dropped to +5c, I suspect that inside the box it was closer to +9.

Cari Amici,

volevo condividere con tutti voi questo delizioso dolcetto con il quale molto spesso io e la mia famiglia, facciamo colazione.

E' un prodotto dal gusto straordinario ed i colori dati dalla frutta secca e candita, ne rendono accattivante anche la presentazione.

Durante le festività natalizie è mia consuetudine metterli in sacchetti trasparenti, chiudere il tutto con un bel nastro e farne dono alle persone amiche.

Mi auguro che piaccia anche a tutti voi.

Vi auguro una buona giornata, a presto, Anna

Revisited this recipe which was posted on TFL by Dolf I believe.  I substituted 50:50 wholewheat:bread flour as I cant find white wholewheat flour.  I also reduced honey a little.  Very happy how it turned out. First time I have rolled top of loaf in grain too. 

Like others here I baked a few rounds of basic batards for use in stuffing and bread pudding.

They all used my wheat and rye starters and had a long fermentation. No pressure on these since they just cut all cut and set to dry for a couple days. Definitely improves the taste of things that requires some bread.