Blog posts

I got a small Pullman pan for Christmas so I've been testing it out. 

I am starting simple with a white milk bread until I get a sense of how much dough it takes to fill it.

 The box the pullman pan came in said "450 grams," which I initially took to mean 450 grams of dough total. That isn't close to enough! And I didn't read this fantastic FAQ on pullman pans and dough weight until after baking. That said, though it was small, my first bake came out quite nicely.

The request was for two loaves of bread for a family party of about 30. The bread would be served with pumpkin soup and alongside some tomato-based vegetarian mains.

I thought I would make two rather contrasting loaves but both 50% whole grain 50% white bread flour. One seeded loaf with khorasan and wholewheat, and the other with spelt and rye, mixed with a tablespoon of malt and some walnuts (ran out of cranberries).

I saw this new recipe on homebaking.at and thought I would give it a try. I'm not exactly sure what a Körnerrebe is; it translates as grain vine, so a bit of a mystery - perhaps someone can enlighten me.

It's a yeasted recipe with a biga and a scald, but pretty simple. One thing to watch is that a special "half active" malt is used. I used my normal amount of diastatic malt ( 2.5g for a half recipe, which is what I made) and made up the difference with liquid ND malt extract (7.5g).

Hi guys, I was away for many years from your webpage and the blog, but I have now time for baking and finding new ideas.

Years ago, we had a discussion about a substitute for the Swiss Ruchmehl. Has somebody a good solution with a reasonable success?

I'm baking St. Galler Puerli with AP and Rye and they are excellent, but you need time for this bread.  I do another bun with AP and Acadian flour - an also very interesting combination.

Cheers - Hampi

It's pretty crazy but while preparing for the migration to the new system I noticed it was almost TFL's birthday. Today the site turns 20 years old. That is older that the iPhone. Or Twitter. My kids were babies/toddlers when I started the site; now they are almost out of university. 

Made a 50% khorasan/bread flour with the khorasan in a biga. Whole khorasan flour was hydrated at 45% with 10% sourdough starter and left at 15 degrees for 14 hours. I then mixed the biga with bread flour this afternoon to make a loaf at 75% hydration. Bulk fermented at 18 degrees for 4 hours, proofed for 1.5 hours and baked at 220 degrees for 40 mins. 

I was expecting the mixing by hand to be very difficult, but it was really just like any other loaf. I enjoyed making the "apple crumble" texture biga!

I haven't baked in quite some time. Largely that is because we have a nice local bakery within walking distance of our apartment now. But the updated site launch seemed like a good time to celebrate by baking a loaf

This is made with Anita's Organic 60/40 Bakers Blend. I had some in the house because I like it for muffins.

This a test post to try the new image machinery, and to try editing the post.  Here's a crumb shot:

This was one of my efforts at making a Altamura-style loaf. Not bad, not great.

After saving the post, I used the "Edit" link to add this sentence.  So far, everything has gone smoothly.

[Added later] Here is my original post about this bake:

I'm going through the discovery process on how to do things on the new site. Sadly I deleted my profile photo (it needed replacing) before figuring out how to do things. Looks like most photos upload much more easily. I just can't seem to reduce the file size enough for the profile pic. 

Also, when I click on "preview", it shows me what things will look like before saving the blog entry, but I can't actually change anything on that screen. Using the back button gives fair warning that everything will be deleted. 

Meanwhile.... 

In a few weeks it's time to celebrate chinese new year and this means getting pineapple tarts baked well in advance, since there's way too much cooking to be done leading up to the day itself. In Singapore these are consumed in the weeks leading up to the new year and as kids they had to be hidden from us to ensure that there were some left for visiting guests during CNY itself! I've continued baking these tarts ever since I left, and my kids and family here have grown to like them.