Blog posts

First attempt at a pugliese

Profile picture for user mdunham21

I am rather new at making homemade bread but it is something I am growing to love.  I come from a family of cooks and bakers, mostly from my mom's side of the family.  Her father was an excellent cook and baker; I recently stumbled upon one of his bread recipes for buttermilk loaf bread.  I have been making this loaf on the weekends for the past year or so.  However, he kept the majority of his recipes in his head and didn't write many of them down.  This has forced me to branch out on my own.

Caramelized Hazelnut Squares from ABAP

Hello, I have a group of people at work I wanted to bake bread for. I wanted to make them something special - this bread seemed to fit the bill!
It was such a pretty bread, as pictured in Advanced Bread and Pastry. With thanks to Mr. Michel Suas for a wonderful, if involved, formula - there are four separate preferments and I had to create a spreadsheet in order to figure out how to scale enough ingredients for 2000g of dough.
I divided into roughly 250g pieces to create as many loaves as I wanted to give (with one extra to keep, for tasting!). 

Working for Favaglie Bread Baking

Toast

Tre mesi dal mio ultimo post, ma continuo a panificare. Oggi scrivo per aggiornarvi sull'andamento dei lavori per il nuovo forno a legna di Cascina Favaglie. Il forno è a buon punto, resta da terminare la canna fumaria, il tetto e la struttura frontale.

Three months since my last post, but I'm still baking bread. Today I write to update you about the construction of the new wood fire oven at Cascina Favaglie. The oven it's almost ok, we need to finish the flue, the roof and front structure.

One More Tartine Loaf

Toast

I had to get this out of my system. I am an admirer of the bakery and the bread and I was glad to be able to take a shot at it. I agree with a lot of what's been said on both sides of the conversation about the book. I'm sure I will read and enjoy it more than I will use it to bake from. For a bakery book of that latter sort, as I've mentioned elsewhere, I still prefer Nancy Silverton. Anyway, I add my pictures for the record. I liked the pictures in the book of the loaves torn open, so I include one of those.

Playing around with bannetons

Hello, I made a batch of Mr. Hamelman's Oatmeal Bread to make some bread today, so I could use my new bannetons!

My sweet little niece is turning 6. I wanted to make a bread design to go with her 6th birthday card, to form part of her gift for her birthday party tomorrow. This is 220g dough, 5" round banneton, and a small bit of Mr. Hamelman's pate morte colored with cinnamon to make the "happy face":

Pain Ordinaire with Rye and Spelt

Profile picture for user OldWoodenSpoon

A few days ago our son announced he had bought a scale, and he needed a straight dough formula for non-sourdough (his preference) "french bread".  He has been baking "French Style Bread" from "Beard on Bread" for a couple of years, and he wanted a weight-based formula for a similar bread.  I gave him some tips on how he could convert his cups-and-teaspoons formula to weights by baking to volume and weighing everything, and I also gave him the flour/water/salt/yeast basic formula for a 65% hydration straight dough bread for a loaf of about 850 grams.  I have not heard back fro

Pugliese, high hydration Italian loaf!

Profile picture for user SylviaH

This is apx. 82% (the recipe 3 X's is apx. 84%) total hydration dough, that I think would be fun for anyone to try.  It is one of my favorites, I've posted HERE before.  The recipe comes from Rose Levy Beranbaum 'the bread bible' and a photo is displayed on the cover.