Blog posts

Pane Nero di Castelvetrano and my new Oven

Hi to everyone on TFL! I've been lurking here for a while, trying to absorb as much information as I can. I finally feel like I have some success worth sharing.

I've been practicing baguettes for some time now and the past few weeks I've been more determined to make small tweaks and hopefully improve the results.

Sending this to Yeastspotting.

Click here for my blog index.

This past week Randy came up from Missoula, MT to help us out at the bakery.  It was a very busy week as we had plenty of special orders plus the usual wholesale and farmers' market work to do.  Fortunately we had perfect weather for both farmers' markets and we had lots of happy customers at both of them.  On Saturday we had quite the customer demand as Sharon and I quickly filled the orders and Randy worked his butt off to keep the shelves filled with bread and the display cases stocked with pastries (sound familiar Thomas?).  If you haven't experienced it yet, it's a

As I blogged a few days ago, the first trial with T55 didn’t turn out as I had planned.

Here is a boule I made last weekend that is worth sharing.  I had replenished my starter but didn't have enough bread flour on hand to make up my usual dough. I knew if I made a trip to the store, by the time I came back, my starter would be past its peak, so I just made up the difference with the flours I had on hand. 

I really liked the flavour of this loaf and it improved throughout the week.  Here is the recipe:

Pain au Levain from Hamelman's Bread (So what if I baked it umpteen weeks in a row? It's really good!)

Pain au Levain Crumb (the real reason I'm posting on this bread again) 

They say "Man cannot live by bread alone. You need side dishes."

 So, this is the first report on my trial of T55 flour my daughter brought back from Paris.  I used to use Shipton’s T55 years ago for a while, but this is the first time I’ve ever used T55 actually made in France….though it’s just a supermarket’s own brand flour, so definitely not the highest quality one.  But to be fair, the supermarket my daughter bought it from was Monoprix, which, according to Wiki, is “considered an up-scale chain and its business model was the inspiration for Waitrose,” in spite of its very un-assuring name :p,  so hopefully it’s