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I baked this bread for the second time and made a couple of changes. Here is the ingredient list as printed.

Buttermilk White Bread
Recipe By: James Beard in Beard on Bread

• 2 packages active dry yeast
• 1 tablespoon granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup warm water (110 to 115, approximately)
• 4 cups unbleached hard-wheat flour
• 1 tablespoon salt
• 3 tablespoon melted butter
• 1 to 1 1/2 cup buttermilk

Changes I made were to use instant yeast and reduce the quantity to 1 tablespoon, next time I'll use even less.

Well, actually, I do love my new job. It's not as boring as the previous one and so much better than studying @ uni (at least my uni). But it has like two major drawbacks: firstly, we are not allowed to wear jeans in the office, and the second, which is really depressing - I have practically no time to bake bread!!!

This is baked from Hamelman's "BREAD", levain breads.

I knew that the radiant heat from a preheated stone will result in an unmatched ovenspring, so i played with my steaming technique a bit to accomodate the stones.

Here is a picture:

This was my bread project last weekend. I really enjoyed making it and it was delicious! I slightly modified the recipe found here. I didn’t do the sponge; I added the sponge measurements to the dough ingredients and halved it. Next time I will omit the red pepper from the herb & cheese mixture (the following includes the adjustment). Here is what I did:

Dough:

2 ½ tsp. Fleischmann's RapidRise yeast

3 - 4 ¼ cups all purpose flour

1 tsp fine sea salt

1 tsp black pepper

http://www.brightbakes.wordpress.com

The latest bake...I used an overnight starter with a pinch of SD, then finished off the dough the next day. Nothing complicated, but this sure was tasty!

Love,

cathy b. @ brightbakes

I have been attempting to begin a sourdough starter. I have tried a few methods from the internet as well as the guru Reinhart's, and the old man Clavel's method. I have been successful up until day three, then nothing. I have gotten my starter to the point of bubbling and regular feedings, but as soon as I take half to replace the new barm the whole thing separates into goo and hooch and goes slack. I have tried to "wake" the starter with small amounts of flour and water. I have even tried cider vinegar, but to no avail. I can't seem to keep the starter alive.

To give my old KitchenAid a break I normally prepare two smaller batches of dough in a row, instead of one large batch. Unfortunately I forgot to account for the flour of the sourdough starter and adjust the flour of the first batch accordingly. No problem lets adjust the water with the second batch. What a stupid idea!! But with the slap and fold method of Bertinet (http://www.gourmet.com/magazine/video/2008/03/bertinet_sweetdough) I was able to get myself out of trouble and the result was pretty good.

Procrastinator's Sandwich Bread: Take 2

Continued from Procrastinator's Sandwich Bread.