Blog posts

This bread was meant to be brought to the picnic with my girlfriends and their kids. It was raining for the whole weekend and we had to cancel it. So, the bread ended up being my breakfast and weekend snacks...a happy weekend for me.

I thought this might be of interest to fellow limeys, both here in the States and back home. My English neighbor gave me a well used booklet "Home recipes with Be-Ro Self Raising Flour" and "Home Recipes with Be-Ro Plain Flour". This had belonged to her mother, and unfortunately there is no date anywhere but Mary is 80 years old so it has to be pretty old. The recipes are given in grams and ounces and there are lots of pictures and useful hints and tips.

For the second proof, i cover my bannetons with clear shower caps from the motel. They don't last very and my stash is gone.  Think how happy I was to find this new product (at least I've never seen it before).  It has 10 covers. They are medium, large and x-large and they will cover round or oblong. THey seem to be pretty good quality.  Doing the happy dance :)  I'm sure people in King Souper's though I was crazy.   Pam

Much excitement.  Kind of a busy weekend.  But late last night after getting home from a friend's birthday party, I mixed the levain for baguettes.  Today I tried to do a bit more baking than I should have.  I wanted to make Lahmajouns for lunch while the baguette dough fermented.  So I mixed the baguette dough first thing, with my first cof of cuppee.  It's a wonder I didn't put sugar and milk in the mixing bowl (I'm not much good first thing in the morning especially after a late night).

Staying home and looking after my wife and new baby has given me all kinds of time to bake, which includes my weekly batch of baguettes.  This week was intended to be the same as last week but without the errors imposed by my wife going into labor, but let me take this opportunity to reiterate my formula and process:

Poolish

• 5.3 oz. bread flour
• 5.3 oz. water
• 1/16 tsp yeast

Final Dough

I have never made this before. I looked up a number of different recipes and then made up my own. I used my old standby of a buttermilk crust. I doubled the crust recipe .  I sauteed 7 sliced Gala apples till tender and added cinnamon and sugar and flour and a pinch of salt. I rolled out the crust and piled on the apples and baked till golden and juicy. I was wonderful with vanilla Blue Bell ice cream. We have it here in the South I don't think everyone can get it ...it is still sold in real half gallons. 

 Single Crust recipe:

I have buying Reynolds parchment paper and recently saw

http://www.webstaurantstore.com/sub434/products/parchment-paper-pan-liners.html

The pricing between Walmart and the above link is so different I am wondering if I am missing something.

The S&H for webstaurantstore was high so does anyone have suggestions?

TIA, al

One downside to working as a baker is that it doesn't allow me time to bake during the week.  So now everything gets crammed into weekends.  And frankly, sometimes after a week at the bakery, I really don't feel like spending a day off baking more.  And yet, inevitably I find my two starters staring at me ruefully, and so on a beautiful Fall day when the temperatures felt more like September than mid-November, I decided to do a series of bakes.