Blog posts

For about the last year I have been working to understand exactly what is going on when a properly proofed and slashed loaf is baked with steam. What is the role of the steam?  What is the role of the yeast?  How does hydration and proofing impact the results?  Deep slash or shallow slash? What are the differences between large and small loaves? ...

After a number of false starts, I have produced a short video showing what is going on. It is annotated but not narrated. I offer it for critique.  What is missing?  And what questions are not addressed?

My parents bought me a Komo mill for my 50th birthday.  These Hamelman WW multigrain loaves used 50% freshly milled whole grains on the finest setting, and included an overnight soaker of cracked wheat/cornmeal/sesame seeds.  

The crumb is as soft as sandwich bread, which is a total surprise.  All other factors were my normal routine, including adding a considerable amount of water during to mix to achieve medium looseness, 4 folds over about 3 hours (more than Hamelman calls for) and a 30 hour cold retard.

I've made substantial progress on my goal of baking and documenting 50 loaves this year, but I'm way behind on actually posting the results. This loaf was baked way back on January 26th, and I'm only getting around to posting it now. I have quite a backlog, actually -- apologies to anyone who might have been following along.

Cinnamon Banana bread

All in all we are testing ways to get the perfect recipe for cinnamon banana bread. Everybody has a recipe for cinnamon banana bread, right? And most of them are actually pretty good. But for the this blog we create it from the start which makes it even better. Keep reading and you can experience it with us and how we got there.

Welcome!

Cinnamon Banana bread

All in all we are testing ways to get the perfect recipe for cinnamon banana bread. Everybody has a recipe for cinnamon banana bread, right? And most of them are actually pretty good. But for the this blog we create it from the start which makes it even better. Keep reading and you can experience it with us and how we got there.

Welcome!

Bread Blog

1 ½ cup of lukewarm water

½ tablespoons yeast

¾ tablespoon of salt

3 ¼ cups of flour  

Two mini trays

Instructions:

For our recipe we chose to use the following ingredients:

• 1.5 cups flour

• 1.5 tsp sugar

• 1 tsp salt

• 2 tsp olive oil

For our recipe we chose to use the following ingredients:

• 1.5 cups flour

• 1.5 tsp sugar

• 1 tsp salt

• 2 tsp olive oil

The Crust is the Limit: Bread Blog

Introduction