Blog posts

I baked the buckwheat batard from Leader's Local Breads yesterday.  This is my third or fourth attempt at this bread, and by far the most sucessful.  The first time I tried this bread I was unaware of the errors in the formula (if you do a search of the site you will find posts on the errors of this book) and ended up experimenting just trying to get a buckwheat starter that I could work with.  The flavor is so unique that I did not give up and have come up with a formula that works for me.  For the buckwheat levain I used 75 grams of my liquid levain that is approximate

There are a lot of possibilities with a basic sourdough loaf. When you have established an almost consistent basic "Pain au Levain" dough you can enrich it with everything you like.

Not a bread post - but I'm going to post my girl's birthday cake here anyway, cause you know...I do it every year.

This year my daughter requested "kittens playing with yarn" on her cake. She's fond of marzipan so I decided to do some sculpting with the sweet almond paste as a cake topper.

When I saw Shiao-Ping's post of Chocolate Sourdough, I knew I had to try it. Her beautiful images drew me into the project and made me drool for a rich dark decadent desert bread. I thought it might pair with cranberry's well and tried a couple different liquors to soak them for extra flavor. I had some great morning oatmeal for a couple days but in the end I decided to let the cranberry's be cranberry's.

Merry Christmas and Happy Channukah,

In my first post to this addictively delicious site, may I ask folks out there for recipes for sufganiyot, or yeasted doughnuts, typically served on Channukah?  I would especially appreciate recipes that do not contain dairy products.  If anybody has a sourdough version that you like, I would love to try it.  Come on guys, we have 8 days so let the games begin...

NOTE: This post is superseded by http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/16314/goat-milk-sourdough-final-word

Hi there, I had this video on Youtube for a while already but I though I'd share it here.

Video was made in a bakery south of France where I used to work last year. I doesn't really help for home bakers to see this because I got all the tools and machinery (especially pastry break) But I know some are interested to see how we manage to make lots of those in average size bakery.

This bakery has average of 150 croissants 150 pain au chocolat per day which is a bit more than average typical french bakery.