Blog posts

hi everyone.

Squeaky wheels get the oil? Or, whinny kids get the lollies, as Chinese put it?

We are headed 300 miles tomorrow to visit our daughters so I had to bake last weeekend. The loaves in the back are Susan's Sourdough with kalamata olives and rosemary. The darker loaves are toasted pecan with blue cheese inspired by PR. The rolls are Floyd's sweet potato. It has been a great 9months of learning to bake. Thanks for the recipes and inspiration, this is a great site for learning if you take it one bite at a time.

My herbal garden has been neglected since I started baking sourdough.  Occasionally I asked my son or my daughter to give the plants a drink. I have seen the bush turkeys in my yard a few times and was wondering what they were up to.  Yesterday morning I finally went and had a good look at my herbs.  My parsleys and mint are surviving but my rocket and cherry tomatoes are non-existent.

By the way, the food issue of The New Yorker just came out and had a long article on Baumkuchen, aka "Spit Cake."  The "spit" in the cake is a large metal stake that is dipped in batter and then rotated near a flame.  This process is repeated dozens of times and then the cake is removed from the stake and slices into disks.  Each slice has "rings" like a tree from the multiple layers of batter getting baked.

Last week I grabbed one of my favorite sandwiches from the Pearl Bakery, a pear and gorgonzola number served on their Walnut Levain.  This weekend I tried recreating the bread at home.

I was pleased with the results.  The formula was roughly:

500g AP flour (Pendleton Flour Mills Morbread)

330g water

100g ripe starter

10g kosher salt

Hey folks.  I've been reading posts at this site for a very long time (years?) and finally decided to sign up.  It's certainly been a good resource for me to learn from and improve my baking.  I have had a few sourdough cultures for a while now and that is what I really enjoy baking with - it all just seems like a big science experiment that you get to enjoy eating when you are done with it!  I've recently relocated from the east side of Oregon to the west side and the rainy season is looking to be the bread baking season for me.

This one is from "Local Breads", a book I have love/hate relationship with. All 4 recipes I've tried so far from this book have turned out beautifully, however, with so many errors, I have to do extensive research online before trusting a recipe from there, such a shame, I would've loved to bake more from it. This one is super delicious, how can it not be, since bacon makes everything better, not to mention the already delicous baguette!