Blog posts

If he shows talent as an artist, give him pencils or modeling wax in his playroom, but do not let him bite his slice of bread into the silhouette of an animal, or model figures in soft bread at the table. And do not allow him to construct a tent out of two forks, or an automobile chassis out of tumblers and knives. Food and table implements are not playthings, nor is the dining-room a playground.

Table tricks that must be corrected from Etiquette (1922) by Emily Post.

I started a new job about two weeks ago and, as a result, I haven't had much time to bake or surf the internet lately. I miss being able to read TFL daily, but I miss sleeping more so I chose sleep over the internet. :) My brotformen are still vacuum-sealed for safe keeping while I get settled with my new routine, so I've been baking in loaf pans.

I hope everyone is having a good late summer, early fall.  

Things have been remarkable busy in my household the past few months and only appear to be getting busier the next few months. But I have been baking when I can.  

Mostly I've been baking sourdough boules, these sorts of things.

500g KABF 100%

100g Oven roasted Sweet Potato 20%

14g Sea Salt 2.5%ish

1/4tsp DA Yeast

400g Water

Today we baked some more San Joaquin Sourdough in the Dutch oven over charcoal.  This time I upped the whole wheat to 300 grams, added 10 grams of water to the initial mix and used pumpernickel flour in place of the dark rye.  One glitch in transfer to the pot was my handkerchief flour lined bread bowl wasn't floured enough so the bread stuck to the kerchief, but a quick whack with the bread knife/lame took care of it. 

Heating the charcoal

Waiting for the bread to bake -

Here is Lucy's latest version of here fruit stupid.  The black plumbs were replaced by empire prune plumbs, the Nutella was replaced by mini chocolate chips and pecan pieces, the bread crust was replaced by a short crust pastry and the berries were replaced by nectarines and peaches.

Awhile ago I bought a screen for bolting flour. I'd done a bit of reading and it sounded like nothing but a good thing; you get the nutritional and flavor benefits of whole grain, with the structure of white flour. I made several loaves using Bob's Red Mill flour, shaking it through the screen to produce maybe 1/4 cup of chaff for the 500 g of flour I needed for my recipe. I couldn't really tell if it was making a difference (I should really do a comparison bake, but frankly my time is limited and I'd want to have plenty of flexibility for a project like that), but I did it anyway.

We are out of white bread again.  Not surprising really since we don’t make much white bread and, when we do, Lucy puts at least 20% whole grain in it…. to tan it some and get rid of that blinding white crumb so damaging to the eyes of anyone who should be exposed to retina debilitating, white bread.