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Howdy all, I've been lurking around this website for about a week and decided to join in. I'm an occasional bread baker who would like to improve my loaves. I got into it because my sons have nut/sesame seed allergies. This meant my wife and I could not trust a normal bakery for good rustic bread because there is no way to be assured that the bread didn't get cross-contaminated with sesame seeds or nut products.

I was just playing with some ingredients on Sunday afternoon, and this is what I came out with - it wasn't perfect, but is probably my favorite breakfast/dessert bread that I've made to date. Ingredients: 1.5 cups water (80-85 degrees) 1.5 cups freshly brewed coffee (allowed to cool to 80-85 degrees) .5 cup whole milk 1.25 cups chocolate chips 4 tablespoons brown sugar 2 tablespoons white granulated sugar 1.5 cups all purpose flour 2-5 cups bread flour (enough to give a good dough consistency - slightly tacky, but not wet) 1 packet instant yeast 1 tablespoon finely ground sea salt Combine t

For the Lunar New Year, aka. Chinese New Year, which was yesterday, i made a batch of steamed buns with sweet black sesame fillings. They were soft and fluffy, except for the age of my flour, which gave a yellowish tinge to it, i think. :) Happy Year of the Dog!

So today I am pretending to camp in our living room with my three (almost four) year old son. At one point, while he is pretending to be a daddy, he turns to me and says "Now, I have to bake some bread and make some pizzas. You stay here and play with mommy and your sister for a few minutes" and marches off to the kitchen. Doh!

Hey Guys, Lucky me I am going to Paris in the spring of this year and I plan on hitting at least one of the bakeries/ patisseries I know of, that being Poilane. However, I want to know pf any others I should hit. Any ideas anyone? Thanks Ryan

Sourdough photos: Yum.

I had an unmitigated success with my sourdough starter today. Two round loaves of something resembling my rustic bread but with my starter instead of yeast. I pulled the starter out and started feeding it every 12 hours beginning Thursday evening. During that time I kept it in my oven with the light on so that it was in a 80 to 90 degree environment. It seems to require that: without it, I don't even get a doubling in 24 hours. With it I get nearly a tripling in size in about 8 hours.

This recipe comes from "Home Baking-The Artful Mix of Flour and Tradition Around the World" by Alford and Duguid. I don't know if this book is known on this board as I recently got involved with this site. It is available from chapters.ca and is well worth it.

Continuing my bread exploration, i decided to try the Sweedish Rye aka Limpa recipe in the BBA. The loaf was too big to fit in my rather..too small oven, so the loaf look like a snake tht've swallowed too many chickens. In fact, one end was falling a bit from my baking sheet (covered all of it in the photo though) :P. I reduced the sugar content and used blackstrapp molasses instead. I regretted it. I should have added more sugar.

With the site turning one year old, I decided it was time to finally put together an article on French Bread. Regular readers probably have noticed that while I bake some kind of French Bread (rustic bread, pan sur poolish, etc.) almost every week, I've yet to do an article on it.