Blog posts

Introduction to bread baking

Bread has been baked since 4000 BCE. Keep this in mind while reading this and other bread books or information. So really all you need is some simple tools, flour (in this intro flour quality won't be a huge issue), salt, water, an oven, and most importantly time.

Tools

These are some pics of whole wheat ciabatta with fermented wheat berries and flax seed loaves I made the other day.  I made them with a sourdough I started by using the leftover water from boiled potatoes, whole wheat, and white flour.  The culture sprung up very quickly using this method.  I wasn't originally intending to make ciabatta, but the dough was so wet i needed to fold it in flour and use a couche to keep it together.  I only had enough room in the oven for three smaller loaves and one large monster that I proofed in a basket.  Has anyo

Friday was my first bake of the new year, and I tried my hand a BBA's Italian bread.

I mixed the biga Thursday afternoon, before heading of to the South Alabama basketball game (we lost, by 3, in OT), and put into the fridge during halftime in the BCS championship game ("Bama won, if you hadn't heard—Roll, Tide, Roll).

After several not-so-happy outcomes, and one pleasing outcome, it was obvious that I needed to get better acquainted with the South African flours that I have.  Previous bakes seemed to indicate that the flours' absorbency was different than I was anticipating, based on my previous experience with U.S.-produced flours.  The only way to find out what was going on with any certainty was to do side-by-side bakes of identical breads, adjusting only one variable (hydration, in this case) at a time so that I could compare the outcomes.

So I was inspired by a very eloquent baker to try my hand at the SJ Sourdough.  We made our Vermont Cheddar and Broccoli soup also.  I can't wait to cut in to the loaf tomorrow to see how it tastes. 

Happy Baking to all!

 http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/15161/eclectic-ciabatta

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/11667/dmsnyder-recipe-index

Yesterday, I was reading about Ezio Marinato. He is a famous italian baker and teacher, one of the most representative member of the italian team at the "Couple du Monde the Boulangerie - Paris" (along with Piergiorgio Giorilli) and gold medal at the "Mondial du Pain, Goût et Nutrition - Lyon 2007".

He is also a baking consultant and I already knew him because of his work with Molino Quaglia and Farina Petra.

I've been reading David's many posts on his [url=http://www.thefreshloaf.com/user/dmsnyder] blog [/url] about San Joaquin Sourdough, a formula he developed that was inspired by a long bulk ferment [url=http://www.thefreshloaf.com/user/janedo] Janedo [/url] wrote about after a visit with Anis Bouabsa.  David had tried enough variations of this formula I had to do some reading before I settled on the approach I was going to take for my first atte

A couple weeks ago, I made Greek bread (Horiatiko Psomi) for the first time (See: Greek Bread - I finally make it with my Greek daughter-in-law). I based it on this recipe, which my Greek daughter-in-law said seemed closest to the bread she had had in Greece. It was good, but I felt it could be improved. I had intended to make the bread with some durum flour, but forgot to use it.

I started last night with an experimental poolish, 1/8 tsp yeast 1 cup AP flour and 1 C water. This morning I added that to 5 C flour, 2 tsp yeast (proofed with sugar and 1 C water) and 1TBS salt. I mixed by hand and started kneading and after ten mins this is what I had:

So I posted it in the photos forum with a plea for help and figured out that I added a whole cup too much flour! It was a dry, dry dough, tearing when I pushed on it and not sticking to itself whatsoever.