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Today, we mixed and baked ciabattas and challah, neither of them sourdough. We mixed and shaped olive bread, walnut raisin bread and miche to be retarded tonight and baked tomorrow. We also scaled ingredients and mixed pre-ferments for baguettes to make tomorrow. The baguettes will be made with two pre-ferments – a pâte fermentée and a liquid levain. The doughs for the ciabatta and for the miche were hand mixes, and all the levains were mixed by hand.

Scaling water for the miche mix

We have a persimmon tree and this year I thought I would make Persimmon bread from the fruit.  First I had to find a recipe that I liked and do a trial run to see how the bread tastes.  I found a recipe at this website that I used to make my bread.  http://blog.fatfreevegan.com/2007/11/persimmon-bread.html The first one turned out very tasty but I thought that I should double the recipe and bake the bread in my panettone mold.

Well, I finally got to use my new Lodge Combi Cooker... and compared it head to head with my cloches (and tested my steaming too!). I made three breads - Tartine  (my way - with more levain since mine is so mild), my normal sourdough boule, and my take on Eric Kayser's Pain aux Cereales. The three breads are shown in the photograph below in the clockwise order listed from the upper left.

Sourdough Rye with Seeds – cast iron bake

First, thanks to Eric Hanner for this post providing inspiration to explore covered cast iron cooking recently:  http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/21006/my-combo-cooker-experiment.  This is my second bake with cast iron and I like the results!  Flavor and texture were awesome!

Good morning fellows, I saw a kenwood standmixer as one of the cheapest here in Ecuador...but I have no references! I wander if someone of the blog belongs of belonged it and the experence, probs, etc  the owner had....here you are the link of the model I ' talking about :www.letsbuyit.co.uk/product/40065233/blenders/kenwood-chef-fixed-stand-mixer...according to the web page is even out of date, but to me, this doesn't matter...happty baking from Quito

Today, we mixed and baked four types of bread – whole wheat, rye, multi-grain and semolina. We also scaled ingredients for tomorrow's breads – ciabatta, challah (non-sourdough), olive, raisin-walnut and miche, some of which will be retarded overnight and baked Friday.

The educational goal of today's bakes was to demonstrate the impact of different ingredients such as whole grains and seeds on fermentation rates, dough consistency, crumb structure, etc.

My tradition of Christmas bread baking began by accident back in 1975, when, considerably younger and poorer, I discovered a recipe for cheese bread in Joy of Cooking that yielded a pretty tasty product.  So I decided that Christmas that family and friends would receive a loaf, something I could afford and that was personal.

This is a light and hearty multi- grain free form loaf bread. It is actually pretty simple. I was inspired by Zoe from her book "Artisan bred in five minuets a day" the baking technique is from her but the recipe is a modified version of hers. I have another one that i use honey instead of water. If you cut 3/4ths cup of water out, replace it with 3/4ths cup of honey.

So my friend and I, who also bakes at home, decide to have this big bake fest. Happening this weekend. Setting up friday night and baking all day saturday.  I happened into this 20qt Hobart mixer a while back.  So the loaf total kind of turned into "we can process this much dough, so why not?".  Could be a disaster.  Pitched the idea of cutting the loaf total in half- not considered.  Have to admit kind of pumped at the challenge.  On paper this thing looks a little out of hand.

I baked this panettone for the first time last year HERE  and loved it so much I'm baking it for family and friends again this year.  No matter what formula you choose...do make a panettone, you will love it and want it everyear...and it's really not as difficult as it seems...really!