Blog posts

Santa came thru last night with a couple of items from the Baker's Catalog and I have a few questions:

Received a round clouch and the instructions all say to put your dough into the cold clouch and then put it in the oven. Has anyone used a ceramic clouch with the kneadless batter, putting the batter into a hot clouch. Will the ceramic crack?

Also received lidded pain de mie for making square loaves. Does this give a crisp crust or no crust at all?

Thanks.

Happy holidays eveyrone and may all your dough rise next year.

I returned from my three week vacation in Canada late on wednesday morning.

Yesterday I baked two loaves for neighbours and today I bake a 18 cup batch of dough ( ciabatta.) I will take this to the neighburs midnight dinner to celebrate.

I did not get to bake too much at my families homes..I was too busy cooking chicken enchilladas for my nephew, who at 18 can inhale them.

Tomorrow I have two couples coming for a traditional turkey dinner. so...Iwill keep this short as the brownies are due out of the oven in any moment..

Happy Hoidays to all,

Be well

Friends of ours are fond of panettone, so I thought that I would try making some for them as a Christmas gift.  After much browsing, I decided to use the recipe for Il Panettone Milanese, located here: http://italianfood.about.com/library/rec/blr0946.htm.  One of the things that drew me to this one is that it uses a naturally-yeasted biga, instead of commercial yeast.  I figured that my sourdough starter (which isn’t especially sour) would yield a good biga and it did.

Since I found this site and joined up, I have been baking ever 2 or 3 days. FOcusing mainly on the "basic loaf" recipe from lesson 1. My bread making has improved with each loaf. My kneading skills have improved immensely and with it my bread quality.

I made Hamelman's Country Bread for an uncle who knows his food. He spoked approvingly about the baguettes in France and I was really tempted to bake some for him and get his opinion on my baguettes. It was also an attempt to get my daughter to eat my breads. She is not a fan of hearth breads and I did not want to bake those soft cotton sweet dough breads found all over the country. The only time she liked my bread was a simple plain white loaf. When I asked her why she liked it, she replied that there were no raisins in the bread.

hi i love bread making and this is the first time i am hear

I am sitting at my sister,s dining room table trying to type on a laptop..  I have never done this before and the keys are sooo narrow!!!

 I baked yesterday, twice in a week!! I did the ciabatta and my brother in law took pictures with a great camara, pictures to come soon. He does part time camera work for hockey teams, so shooting bread gave him a whole different goal.

The flour worked differently again, and the crumb is once again different We had to open the windows as the cornmeal was burning and she was worried about the fire alarm going off..

Its probably stale by now but I made an attempt at claypot bread. I probably need a few more practice to get the hang of it but it was fun. Perhaps I am too used to the conventional way of making bread but I think the old way makes bread that is predictable and better looking.

More pictures in http://www.angelfire.com/planet/tomsbread/index.htm