Blog posts

Hello,
I just attended Kneading Conference West 2011 in Mount Vernon, Washington, which was held September 15-17.
What a wonderful gathering of farmers, millers, researchers and bakers! I met a lot of very nice and interesting people!
The whole experience was fantastic - meeting so many people and seeing a few people I'd met before, attending the seminars and lectures, the beautiful setting in amongst the gardens and orchard, and the food was delicious!

It all started when Arlo blogged about his beautiful Pain de Urban made with rye levain.

 A few days later, it was Syd followed it with a STRONG recommendation that everyone and their grandmother and their dogs should bake it because it was so good. 

I have been baking a batch of Bagels every other day for a week, trying to figure out how get consistent results and decide which shaping method to use and recipe to use. Most recently my goal has been to incorporate onions in the process and make a batch of half onion and a few poppy seed and a few "everything".  In another thread I had asked the best way to add onions on top so I could split the batch up and change the topping using the same dough mix.

this whole bread thing gets more fun by the day!!

I tried two very different doughs in my new Bosch Universal Plus this weekend.  The machine performed very well, and the breads were all good.

It was a busy baking weekend here in Pretoria.  My lease for the house is up at the end of September, which means I'll be in temporary quarters for the last two weeks of my stay here.  Since I don't know what I might have for kitchen facilities during that time, I'm trying to fit in the baking that I need/want to do while I can.

Tomorrow morning, at the ungodly hour of 4AM, I'm heading off to catch an airplane, the first leg of a trip to Sedona,  the Grand Canyon, Lake Powell, Monument Valley, and Bryce and Zion National Parks. My wife, who suffers from acrophobia, is staying home. My friend of 48 years--we met as Ensigns on a USN destroyer in 1963--is joining me in Phoenix. Two years ago, sharing our Bucket Lists, we discovered neither of us have seen Grand Canyon. We'll be away nine days.

In a comment to my "Holiday Bake" blog Andy posted a formula for the Welsh tea bread Bara Brith, which I made today according to his formula with great success.

The formula mentions nothing about the baking profile - I made a 1300 g loaf in a tin, and baked for 50 minutes, starting at 230C and gradually turning the heat down to 170C after 40 minutes.

And I didn't use all of the tea. But the formula gave us a really great tasting fruit bread with a slight aftertaste of black tea.