Blog posts

Light work week has given me time to bake at home.  First batch was the 1,2,3 formula again and then I did a sour dough baguette batch for today.  Here are the results:

Tuesday:

And then today:

Hi All,

I am making Russian rye bread that has aproximately 50 % whole rye starter 83% hydrated.  My problem is that it is to sour and the top split before I even baked.  I think that the yeast % is to high and it has fermented to long.  I am using high gluten flour and all but 7 % of the rye flour is prefermented.  Also does anyone know what S500 does in a a bread dough?  It is a preservative and would it change the overall texture?  Any feedback would be appreciated.

Gena

As I said in my first blog entry, I made a new WW sourdough for the friend, this time with CORRECT amount of salt. And this is how it came out.

 …..with a better ear…..

We were invited to join friends on their caravaning holiday in Darwin this year, we did a similar holiday meeting up in Broome 2 years ago and had great fun. Bob and Joan are retired and are part of a large number of Australians known as grey nomads, they tend to travel north to the tropics  to avoid the cold weather and head south when the weather gets hot.

Last week HeidiH posted about her Heavenly Hard Rolls. I've made lots of rolls but I don't think I ever went after an actual hard roll with a soft chewy crumb before. So I called Stanley Ginsberg at nybakers.com and ordered some Pivetti 00 Rinzfornato flour since Heidi was so excited with her results. I really like that I have access to what I consider exotic ingredients at a reasonable price with Stan. The couple extra bucks for shipping is a bargain to be able to use premium flours for a special project in my opinion. 

This is a bit of a cowboy post, a cake blog rather than a bread blog. I took a holiday, flew to Moscow for a few days, meaning I had to put my bubbly starter to sleep for a few days. I am eagerly waiting for it to wake up now, but I wouldn’t wait another day without baking something.

Two weeks ago, we were nearing the end of a week's vacation along South Africa's southern coast.  We had stayed in Kenton on Sea, Port Elizabeth and Plettenberg Bay.  On our way back to Plett from a day trip to Knysna (who knew it would be in the middle of their Oyster Festival?!), we passed a clearing beside the road with a large banner proclaiming "Saturday Market".  Not knowing quite what to expect, we made plans to return the next morning to see what might be available.

This recipe is from The Bread Book by Linda Collister and Anthony Blake and it was the second serious bread book I bought about 17 years ago.  It was quite forward thinking for its time as all the recipes include weight measurements (metric and imperial).  It is still one of my favourite bread books and it is definitely worth a buy.  It has really good photographs.