Blog posts

Just as well we have our starters!  

So my isolation bubble shrunk a week ago when Swiss family members could finally catch a flight home.  So I baked last week, an ok bake but I am having trouble getting decent oven spring.  This week I thought, ok try the other flour, a different supermarket brand that a friend had dropped off. Secondly, have yet another go at baking in my hooded BBQ.

So, Bread #1 - a simple mixed flour loaf with 14% kamut, 10% homemilled spelt and 10% home milled rye and 84% hydration.

My last blog entry was back in November 2019...right at the end of the world as we knew it.  This new way, this surreal reality with it's need for self-isolation, self-distancing, economic and social shut down under the ravages of a global pandemic is our present and our future until the hope of a vaccine/treatment is realized.  Everything is different, we struggle to adapt to the new world order and way of doing things in order to survive, fear and anxiety are the underlying emotions of the day, hope is the what keeps us going.

My kids keep telling me to "stop with the bread". I tell them I'm Italian and like carbs. They shrug and walk away...

I made Robertson's 70% whole wheat bread for us and two traditional Tartine loaves for family.  I'll have ours on Sunday for Easter dinner and provide the crumb shot then. Considering these were same day bakes (ie no overnight retard) I'm pleased with them. I suspect the one of the traditional loaves are a bit under-proofed but I'm not sure. I need to work on creating a sharper ear too..

A great read from Bill Buford, The New Yorker - https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/04/13/baking-bread-in-lyon

Not a bread, but something to do with it when you've baked too much! I stumbled on a nice recipe for panade from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall at The Guardian. This bread-based stew is a vegetarian favorite that I'd somehow never heard of. With extra sourdough baguettes lying around, no ideas for dinner, and a fortuitously-purchased head of cabbage in the fridge, panade seemed like the right thing to do.

Hey guys! First time bread maker here, been working on a sourdough starter and I’m currently on day 3 of feeding, just wondering if it looks normal! I fed it about 4 hours ago it the band around the bottle is where it was after feeding.

Lately I've been enjoying the freedom to bake on a more... open... schedule, and I've been trying some combinations of techniques I've learned from a book or two and the supremely knowledgeable members of this forum. For sandwiches I love nothing more than piling tasty fillings atop a tasty baguette, so I thought I'd try using my levain to bake baguettes for the first time. Unfortunately I don't have a stone big enough for two-footers so I had to truncate these down to "baton" length.

I just wanted to give a public shoutout to Bonni who shared some starter.

I used a basic sourdough process, adapted from countless youtube and fresh loaf articles.

Our neighbor’s daughter-in-law Yumi returned from her annual trip to Japan where she lived until a few years ago, and was thoughtful and kind enough to bring me back two 1K bags of different Japanese AP flours.  I’d make a set of baguettes with her 11.5% protein flour before and they came out just dandy.

This is such a fun bread to make, and in contrast to loaves that weigh a pound or two, this one weighed in at 1886 grams (~ 4.16 pounds).  It is from The Bread Baker's Apprentice (by Reinhart), and for those who have the book you will likely recognize the loaf as the one in the cover photo.