Blog posts

All work (and a few pretzels)

Work has kept my bread making to a minimum the past few months. Visiting all of you at TFL this evening has me pulling the starters out of the fridge and shopping for food grade lye once again. With my family on the road I like to make pretzels just for me. I've been using a boiling water bath with baking soda but I used a link I found here for www.aaa-chemicals.com in Houston Texas and found that they will be offering free shipping November 19th - 23rd.

Maggie Glezer's book

Toast
After reading so much about Artisan Baking Across America I decided I had to take a look and ordered it through my wonderful local library. To my amazement I recognized it - I must have borrowed it from another library way back when, before I made "real" bread. I particularly remembered the pandoro, and thinking that the baker must be out of his mind. Has anyone here attempted to make it?

Bread Discs - the good kind

[center]bread discs[/center] The other day when I made grissini, I used part of the dough to make Susan's (Wild Yeast) Tortas de Aceite (Olive Oil Wafers). They may not look quite as nice as Susan's but I have a feeling that we like them as much as she does. I made ours with fennel seeds (didn't have anise seeds) and Pernod, which I'm guessing amounts to the same thing as "anise liqueur". Wow!

My Daily Bread-Large Crusty Boule

I have been baking larger (2# ) loaves of rustic Italian formula free form recently. I decided to double the mix and drag out the large linen basket and try one more time to get the proofing right. Usually I over proof and the dough falls with a thud as I approach the slashing table with bare blades. I have been following Mariana's procedure for crusty Italian and my handling of the dough has been more on the gentle side with a strict 1 hour limit on the bulk ferment.

Working on whole wheat recipe

Toast
I am trying a new WW recipe from Peter Reinhart's new book. It calls for a very stiff starter and a mash. The 1st attempt my dough was very slack and not too much spring in the oven. Came out very tight grained and not much volume. My dough for this after my 1st rise felt good and springy. My 2nd attempt was not too good either. My mash was still warm (could that have an effect) but my dought was very lifeles after my 1st rise. It cooked off with not much spring and tight crumb. Any ideas. I feel like it could use more water? The 2nd dough was like a big dead lump!!