Blog posts

This weekend I decided to return to the scene of my previous crimes in the name of croissants and have another go at them.  I've been spurred on in part by hansjoakim's magnificant [url=http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/17952/walnut-levain-and-croissants] croissants [/url] he shared with us a few weeks back, as well as by ensuring conversations involving him and ananda about differences in puff pastries and in the levels of butter and lamination involved in each.

That would be the French Bread II (with Pâte fermentée), also from Crust and Crumb. I mixed more all-purpose flour (4.5 of 7 cups) then bread flour. Added flaxseed. What's new: I used a razorblade to do the scoring, still have to get used to that. I allow for deeper scoring then the surgeon's knife, but it is more difficult to make a regular pattern. I'll have to find a straw to attach the blade too....

Well, I'm not suggesting putting rye flour into your macaron batter, although that could be interesting for savoury macarons...if such a crazy thing as a "savoury macaron" exists... Let's do the rye thing first and then look at the macarons afterwards.

Somehow,  my miche was NOT quite a miche,  as it had a darker brown.  I wonder if my flour has a mixed of rye,  it turns my bread dark brown.  I went into the website - Aurora - Weizen Vollkornmehl.  But there was no indication of rye mix,  it just indicated whole grain whole wheat.  I guess it has more bran than other whole wheat flour?

My bread cracked up as well,  I guess because I baked it cold,  and its suppose to flat out,  but I put it into a claypot?

Perhaps someone can enlighten me?

SD Psomi after Greenstein's "Psomi Bread"

On page 151-153 of Greenstein's “Secrets of a Jewish Baker,” there is a recipe for what he calls “Psomi Bread.” He says he had this from a bakery in New Hampshire and made his own version. His formula is as follows (The weights are my estimates. Greenstein only provides volume measurements.):

Sponge (150% hydration)

I am slowly getting ready for Farmers Market.  Still cooking in my home.  The commercail kitchen is still a couple of weeks away.  I have five different sourdough breads, three different flour blends.

Using Peter Reinhart's Pain au Levain, morph some into Pain ausx herbes provance using Panzy's Herb de Provence blend.

Using Peter's San Francisco recipe I use Gérard Rubaud flour blend.  Some of it morphs into a multigrain using 3/4 King Arthurs Harvest Blend and 1/4 extra poppy seeds.

I also made Reinhart's Whole Wheat sourdough.

Definitely the best but most rich cinnamon buns I have ever had. Used Suas' croissant formula, then I threw together some cinnamon sugar and cinnamon icing.

There are, at least, two threads running currently whose subjects deal with "the past'":

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/18072/primitive-cooking-techniques-amp-discussions

and,

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/18097/fredk-t-vine

I'm feeding my levain tonight, plan on baking on Sunday ...for real this time.  My wife and I are going out for dinner tomorrow since it's our 6th anniversary.  That would conflict with a late afternoon Saturday baking, so I'll bake for sure on Sunday and probably also on Monday to get caught up with The Bread Challenge.  Sunday will be Hamelmans Whole Wheat Bread w/pate fermentee and Monday will be his whole wheat bread with soaker.  I'm looking forward to trying a soaker since I haven't tried that method yet

When I bake baguettes, they are coming out too dark on the bottom, too light on top.  I have a baking stone in the floor of my oven (GE Profile gas) and I place the loaves in the perforated baguette trays in the middle of the oven.  Also, the thermometer I place inside the oven reads a lower temperature than what the digital oven temperature indicator says, by anywhere from 25 to 50 degrees.