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My wife's christmas present was a baking course at the Lighthouse Bakery, a small bakery focussing on teaching and some wholesale.

We were 4 participants and made some wonderful breads out of 5 different doughs using biga, rye sourdough, sponge, poolish and pate fermentee.

The most surprising and spectacular of the breads we made was the pugliese, which is also the "signature" loaf of the Lighthouse Bakery.

Liz and Rachel, who run the bakery, are happy for the formula to be shared, so here it is:

Or so it would appear.  Just look at these innocent, unbaked rolls.  See how happy they are:

And then see them after being baked:

Ahh! Demon rolls!

Just wanted to share. :)

A recent blog post made me sit up and take notice.   http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/22954/getting-grigne-observation shows two loaves; one made with steam at the beginning of the bake, the second steamed later in the process.   The first one looks better by a lot.   Lately I've been making batards with two cuts.   The most frequent outcome is that one of the cuts opens nicely and takes most of the bloom of the loaf, and the second opens a bit, and then seals over.   In trying to diagnose

Hello,

Franko kindly referred me to an absolutely lovely bakery in Victoria, BC, called fol epi - 
(fol epi means 'wild wheat stalk').
I had the pleasure of visiting this bakery last month. Thanks Franko! - this place was quite a find!

I've been trying to do too much at once.  It occurs to me today that although my sourdough has been going for over a month now, I've yet to really bake anything successful with it (except for the buttermilk cluster, which was an exercise in accidental genius and a lot of time, I think).  The problem is, I'm usually going after recipes that are so wacko or are so much my own creation (throw some spelt in here, whole wheat here, lower hydration, etc) that there are too many variables to tell what the issue is.

I just sliced into my first Pullman Loaf.  I was given a Pullman loaf pan as a gift and simply followed the recipe on the packaging.  It came from Williams-Sonoma.  Needless to say, I am thrilled. The slices are light, yet toothsome and has a mellow flavor, but addictiing.  I admit, it was a little challenging to knead the butter into the dough, so I cheated and used the stand mixer.  Here are two snapshots.

On our last visit to my parents in Germany I chatted with my sister-in-law who lives in Switzerland - about bread.

She tried to make the Zopf many families enjoy in Switzerland on Sundays, but she couldn't reproduce the flaky texture which is so typical.

After a bit of research I found a recipe on www.schweizerbrot.ch which worked very well for me, and this Zopf has become quite popular with friends and family.

It is essentially like a Challah without sugar and goes well with all sorts of sweet toppings, as well as cheeses.

This made some of the nicest hot cross buns I have ever tasted.  I used the same dough as for the Asian Style Pain de Mie but added: