Blog posts

I discovered the other day I had 3 almost-full bottles of fennel seed, presumably due to repeated cravings for fennel, a bad memory, and a very cluttered spice cabinet.  There's only one thing to do when that happens, of course: make bread with fennel seeds in it.

I whomped up some dough as follows:

450g unbleached bread flour, 50g whole wheat flour, 1 tablespoon SAF "red" instant yeast, 1 tablespoon fennel seed, 1.5 teaspoons salt, 0.5 teaspoons diastatic malt powder, 333g very warm water. 

Sorry all, The "Keyword" does not get printed in the post.   I put "Carol Field in the Italian Baker" in the Keyword so you would know the source of the reference.  Page 36 if you have the book.

She says, "Never sift flour for bread; always for pastries and cookies."   How does one sift??  Would an ordinary strainer do or do you need a flour sifter??

Secondly, what are we sifting for?   Do we expect lumps in the flour or are we adding air??

This past Monday my wife and I arrived home from our very first visit to Europe where we spent 3 nights in Prague, then 8 full days cruising the Danube from Germany, through Austria, Slovakia, and finally disembarking in Budapest. It was a marvelous trip which we enjoyed immensely, but as always it's good to get back home, especially after spending 10 + hours flying, transferring, waiting to fly, then transferring twice more before landing back on Vancouver Island.

I went to the local Italian store and bought 5 pound of Antimo Caputo (from Naples) flour.   First of all, it is expensive.  I think it was $5 for 4 pounds or was it $15 for 5 pounds, I do not remember.   I didn't care because I wanted to try it.

I made several 1 pound portions, used two and froze the others in separate oiled freezer bags.

Replication Bake of Emulsified Raisin
Yeast Water Loaf

For the initial loaf, see
link:

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/23945/emulsified-raisin-yeast-water-loaf

So I wanted to make a batch of Black Canyon sourdough last night, to repay my neighbor for the 2 lbs of fresh-caught cod he gave us. No mise en place. Pretty distracted after work etc. But in I plunged, only to come up about 1.5 C short of All-Purpose flour. Doh! So I used a combo of spelt, oat and White Whole Wheat bread flour from Whole Foods. It took about 45-50 minutes of vigorous kneading by hand to get any structure and windowpane.

I made a pizza last week, that turned out very good.  I addapted the recipe from hamelman's BREAD. I made a stiff levain instead of biga, and omit the oil. I used canned tomatoes made by me last summer, fresh mozzarella, dried oregano, and fresh basil added in the end. I put the stone at the lowest level in my gas oven, and the pizza was done in 7-8 minutes. It's the best I can do at home. The crust was absolutely delicious!!!

I have been going through a bit of a baking drought lately, but on Friday lunch refreshed my starter so that I could bake when I got off work in the evening.  I hadn't planned on anything, but when I got home and found the starter at its peak, I had to act quickly and there was no time for elaborate planning.  Accordingly, I just ad libbed and this is what I did.  

100g mature starter @ 100% hydration

250g water

3g diastatic malt

50g rye flour

Here’s my favorite variation on my favorite bread--the Basic Country Bread from Tartine Bread.   Since it’s now my most frequent bake, I figured I should write up my procedure both for my own reference and the breadblogosphere.