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This is a crazy looking bread from the town of Matera in Southern Italy made with durum flour and a natural sourdough starter…  I had tried making this bread before with the durum flour, but made the dough too wet so it wasn't very easy to shape.  This most recent attempt was reasonably successful.  What makes this bread interesting is that it is shaped after the final proof and dumped into the oven.  Please see the links below about this bread and how to make it...

I have been wanting to try this method for sometime and have just been putting it off until today.  Of coarse I had to pick today, my kitchen still in some construction mode after remodeling my shower, it had leaked through on the kitchen ceiling, an appointment with a glass and mirror installer...and today is Mike's birthday, so everything is in a bit of a rush.  I baked a couple of mulitigrain loaves, and upon doing this I decided to try a new method of creating steam in my oven.  I'm convinced the only way I'm going to get steam that's not continually 'vented' ou

After 27 hours it was finally time to feed my starter....1 cup of regular, all-purpose flour seemed almost anti-climatic after the long day of anticipation and worry. Maybe it was the dry milk, but it just didn't look like it had obtained the yogurt consistency I needed. Before unwrapping the plastic, I couldn't help but worry: was there really yeast fermenting in there? I was only barely decent at creating the magic that was bread using store-bought insta-active-dry yeast; was I over-reaching by trying to create my own....?

My daughter wanted me to bake something for Halloween. Here we go!

Originally posted on 10-16-2010 at Evil Shenanigans

I am so glad that some of you tried and liked the 36 hour sourdough baguette formula. I am still making it every week - it's our Friday "treat". Of course, I just can't help messing with a good thing, so I modify the original formula a little bit each time, some turned out really well, the following 3 are my recent favorites:

1) Pumpkin baguette - a.k.a. I don't care it's still nearly 90F out, it's FALL!

I recently dusted off my old John Coltrane records, and I've been listening to them pretty much non-stop this weekend. Coltrane's one of those artists that I listen to intensely for weeks on end, before I need to pause, put the records down, and breathe a sigh of relief. For me, the intensity of the music itself seems to induce this kind of listening. Even though I'm generally partial to the fire and cinder of his late Impulse! records, "Giant Steps" is probably the record that's closest to my heart.

Sports fans are notoriously superstitious.  Whatever they do on the day of a big win somehow becomes the cause of that win, and must be repeated in order to assure the next win.  So, I guess I have to bake Babka again today, Tuesday and Wednesday or the Giants are bound to face defeat.  Well...if they don't make it to the World Series, I'll take the blame cuz one Babka bake is enough for now. Yesterday, my first attempt at Babka (Chocolate-Cinnamon-Pecan) led to a thrilling one-run win in the Giants first NLCS game against the Phils.