Blog posts

PR's ABED starting off with Lean Bread and 100% Whole Wheat Hearth Bread

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I recently purchased Peter Reinhart's artisan breads every day. I have been kneading by hand and wanted to try the minimal mixing, overnight cold ferment sytle recipes he provides to see what kind of rise/crumb structure I could get. We were having company for dinner last night whose diet required only whole wheat bread so I decided to make a half batch of each of the Lean Bread and 100% WW Hearth Bread. I had never made a 100% WW.

Using up the leftovers

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I've been making a lot of bread lately. Had some extra that I either needed to throw away or make something out of. They won't let you feed it to the ducks in Portland, you know. So, I used my remarkable internet research skills to look for recipes using leftover bread. Apparently, many people just make bread crumbs and put them in the freezer. I was looking for something a little more exciting.

Documenting an Obsession, the first week

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Prehistory: waaaay back in 2007, I was obsessed with making Neapolitan pizza at home--self-clean cycle, quarry tiles, Jeff Varasano. That's where I first learned about autolysing and slow fermentation. And it explains my unhealthy preoccupation with getting the wide open crumb. During this time I also made some nice lemon rolls (from a sticky bun recipe, minus the cinnamon, minus sticky topping, lemon zest in place of cinnamon:

I've figured out what sourdough and bread really are...

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I've been doing a lot of thinking lately, and here's what I've come up with:

Sourdough: A device made from flour and water used for cultivating natural yeast.

Bread: A balloon like device made from usually wheat flour and water used for capturing "yeast farts". 

So based on this definition, bread is a "Yeast Fart Balloon".

Tim

First bake from Bertinet's 'Crust'

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This past Sunday I was in the book store browsing...where else.. but through the cooking section. One of the books that interested me the most was Richard Bertinet's 'Crust', in particular for some of the unique recipes in it. It also included a DVD of Bertinet demonstrating his techniques for hand mixing and kneading brioche and levain. The book has some very good photography as well and the price was reasonable so I went for it. Mr. Bertinet has been mentioned a fair bit lately on TFL so I was curious to see what I could learn from him.

Cassis And Currant Bread

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Another very tasty bread from Dan Lepard's "A Handmade Loaf", I mostly followed the formula, but left out the instant yeast, using rye starter only, which means the bulk rise was 3 to 4 hours at room temp, then shaped and retarded the loaves in the fridge overnight. The next morning, took out, warmed up for 1 hour, then baked.