Blog posts

Greetings lovely bready friends:)

It has been almost 12 months since I did a blog post.

I moved from a city of 2 million to a town of 16,000 (at peak times) ...

We lived in a house for the first 7 months (after our house purchase fell through) that had an oven from hell.

Looked like a dream BUT no!! So no baking, in fact limited cooking went on as well:(

We finally found a house we liked enough to buy after 7 months looking BUT the oven is not great...

Its ok, but not at all really a bread oven, hence bread and yeasty things have been scarce.

Several months ago I took a risk and plunged. I opened a microbakery focusing on central European-style breads... in Cambodia, Southeast Asia. Crazy, ain’t it? Prior to that, I was just an amateur baker, with a mediocre office job, who was obsessed with sourdough.

Anyway, during the last 2 weekends I sold my breads at a local craft market. So far we haven’t done too well, but before I get into details let’s fill you in on what we’ve been doing to stay afloat.

Caution: Photos of delicious German food ahead.

I love any bread made with Durum flour so I figured it would be a good idea to combine some fresh ricotta cheese along with a Durum starter and a porridge made with rolled oats and pearled barley.

I am continuing my journey into mastering this one loaf - and this marks 4 in a row that have been nearly perfect. Still 20% WW, 19% Very Active Firm Starter (VAFS).

Like @pipsbread, I am using mostly instagram now to chroncile my Baking journey. 

Check me out at @amberartisan.

ALSO: After saving 2 grad from summer jobs, I am intending to purchase a Rofco B-40 oven at christmas time and tremendously expand my prodcution level to include 2 or 3 farmer's markets in the summer! I'll keep you posted on Instagram.

Formula:

100% Bread Flour
6% Malted Milk Powder
6% Shortening
1.4% Vital Wheat Gluten
8% Canned Pumpkin
0.2% Lecithin
1% Instant Yeast
60% Water

Remix
8% Sugar
1.75% Salt
0.25% Cinnamon

This batch used 18 ounces of flour (510g), and was baked in an oversize loaf pan (5” x 10” x 3”).

I think I don't have to add to much text here the pictures will do it!!

So, I have been following the formula for Roberta's Pizza Dough, as reported in the New York Times.  However, after spending a fortune on a flour mill, I could not bring myself to purchase the '00' flour (nor did I find any whenever I was looking for it in the supermarkets).

Great recipe! Brotdoc did a great job with the directions on his website. The tricky part of this recipe, which I learned after baking is not to over proof!

Second, I have to admit I'm still learning how to form loafs (as my photo will attest to) which is why I picked this recipe.

The flavor was excellent, we had it this morning with butter, cheese. An excellent bread, I will make it again to get better at it!

Here's the link with the English translation through Google Translate -

Hello, everybody! This is my first blog entry on TFL, so I figured I ought to give some pretext as to who I am as a baker. I thought a good way to do this would be to show some loaves I baked this summer.

Semolina bread

Miche, Pointe-à-Callière

I scored some Montana Wheat, Prairie Gold Hard White Spring Wheat berries while visiting a friend, and decided to try the Overnight Country Brown with the White Spring Wheat Berries for the whole wheat portion of the formula.

For this bake, to make the levain, at 9:00 p.m. I used 25 grams of my unfed starter (last fed about 10 days prior to making the levain), added 100 grams of AP flour, 100 grams of the milled Prairie Gold, and 100 grams of water. 

At 7:00am, I autolysed the 604 grams of AP flour, 276 grams of white wheat, and 684 grams of water.