Blog posts

Flours that I have used:

Hecker's Unbleached All Purpose Flour

Hecker's Whole Wheat Flour

Gold Medal Whole Wheat Flour

Arrowhead Mills Organic Unbleached All Purpose Flour

Arrowhead Mills Organic Rye Flour

Whole Foods Market 365 Unbleached All Purpose Flour

Whole Foods Market 365 Whole Wheat Flour

King Arthur Unbleached All Purpose Flour

King Arthur Unbleached Bread Flour

King Arthur Organic Unbleached Bread Flour

Bob's Red Mill Organic Unbleached Bread Flour

Bob's Red Mill Semonlina Flour

25% Semolina Sourdough - 12/7/09

Starter Build 1

50g - stiff starter (active)

50g - semolina (Bob's Red Mill)

50g - bread flour (KA Organic)

100g - water

Starter Build 2

250g - all of starter build 1

100g - semolina

100g - AP flour (Whole Foods or Hecker's)

100g - water

Final Dough - 2296g total dough weight @ about 72% hydration

550g - all of starter build 2

500g - AP flour

250g - bread flour

250g - semolina

720g - water

I love challah and have never tried Glezer's sourdough version.  I don't have her book.  I was so inspired by David's post I thought I would attempt it.  I added some golden raisins because I knew my husband would love them in the loaf so I added some to the 3 braided challah.  The round 4 strand loaf is plain but my favorite shape.  I only did a couple of things different.  I used the lesser amount of starter 200 gms.

A few weeks ago, I posted a question about using soft winter wheat for baking artisan bread. Here's the brief story. My wife and I are somewhat passionate about local food. Since we can only grow soft wheat here in Kentucky, I always assumed that I would have to buy flour milled from wheat grown in Kansas or the Northern Plains.

Fast forward to Monday when I was at the market and saw this:

Background:

Inspired by Txfarmer's post ( http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/14636/auvergne-rye-baguette-bacon ) last week I baked Leaders Auvergne Rye with Bacon today.  I didn't have the really open crumb txfarmer had but I'm pleased with the results.  These loaves were proofed in the fridge overnight which, if anything else developed a good 'skin' that made scoring easy.  I expected more of a bacon flavor - I'd say there is a hint of flavor but not much more - which is disapointing after adding seven slices

We spent yesterday taking our granddaughter Jewels to hear Mrs. Claus reading stories and her first visit with Santa. Being 17 months, she wasn't all that enthralled with the story time, but did enjoy marching around and having a great conversation with herself and whoever else wanted to listen. The babbling cracks me up, she is so expressive with her hands.

Hello Everyone:

   I live in a small town in VA, and on a yearly basis new books are purchase for the library.  I requested the Bread Baker's Apprentice( because of the high recommendation from this site) for the library since we have nothing remotely close to what being recommended on this site. I copied Floyd's book review and  gave the list to the librarian who has to submit to the committee.  Well, the verdict came two days ago!

This bread has two sources of inspiration. First is the basic sourdough formula from BBA, which is this week's recipe for the BBA challenge (yes, we are still hanging on, the end is near though); the other is the mexcali heat bread from the ever so helpful sourdough home website:http://www.sourdoughhome.com/chipotlebeanbread.html

As of late, I have been taken by the flavor of durum flour in my breads. Most often I make Susan's sourdough and use about 15% rye and 5% durum along with the bread flour. I had been using more than 5% of durum flour but got a bit carried away. The flavor enhancing effect turns into flavor dominating if you go above 10%.(imho) Less than 10%, it adds a slight buttery flavor and beautiful color to the crumb.