Blog posts

The bottom iof the loaf shows the true color of this bread

Our daughter found out yesterday morning that she passed the national PA certification test.  Yea!  Now she can get a job and start the rest of her non-school life.  We could not be prouder of her.   All the hard work she has put in through college and the PA school has finally paid off and now she can make her own way in the world and follow her path to where ever it leads her.

Whew, it's been a while since my last post! I've been busy opening a brewery,

I went up to Skowhegan, ME for the Kneading Conference this year, in part to learn about using more local grains in my beer, and part to take the home baker's course. It rekindled my fire for bread, and I've been baking up a storm.

I made a No Knead Cheese Bread last night. It came out fantastic!  I added about two cups of finely shredded sharp cheddar cheese to the dough right before the second two hour rise.

 Also this time I did a few things different compared to my first No Knead Bread.

1. For the second rise I put the dough on lightly floured PARCHMENT PAPER instead of a tea towel. This made it much easier to put into the dutch oven.

CIBATTA style bread 83% hydration and small amount of dry yeast preferment

PREFERMENT

200ml HI-LO Milk

100g Stone ground wholemeal

0.25g Dry Yeast

I took the opportunity to use milk that was just on the turn to sour for this bread mixing the preferment at 8.50 am  and allowed it to do its thing for the rest of the day later in the evening  i added the rest of the ingredients and mixed this dough by hand on the bench

500g Flour

12g Salt

310g Water

I've sent away for the Carl's Oregon trail starter. Is anyone willing to share their starter? I saw there were posts a few years ago about a starter exchange. Did that ever materialize?

I was shopping this morning at my local natural food store and lingered too long in the grain aisle.  And this happened.  I bought some hard red wheat berries thinking I'd throw them in the Vitamix and see what happens.  And this happened.

I made this bread back in June and really liked it then. It was one of the breads I wanted to repeat. Because of time, I changed the method and ingredients a bit and used a bit less cereal and water. For some reason, this dough seemed extremely wet when it came to shaping but it is hard to compare it to the other dough because I bulk fermented that one in the fridge, shaped it cold and proofed it on the counter. This one was bulk fermented in a warm place and proofed in the fridge. I think I got a bit more oven spring with the first method but both recipes turned out quite nice.

I finally got around to trying my hand at DMSynder’s San Joaquin Sourdough recipe, one that I bookmarked years ago, but hadn’t got around to trying for no good reason.  I used the “Updated” SJSD recipe post, though he left me know he’s made some updates to the update, so next time I’ll make the latest tweaks as well.

The ciabatta, something I've not made in a long time, is the result of a request from new friends that own an Italian restaurant who complain of a lack of good bread in our area and wanted an easy recipie so they could make their own. Go figure everyone seems to want that but when you tell them that good bread takes time and technique they mostly lose interest.

We are looking for help in our Waltham bakery, Bread Obsession - including delivery and logistics plus bread baking.   We will train.   If you know of anyone who is interested, please have them get in touch.   http://boston.craigslist.org/bmw/fbh/5758711840.html
Thank you.

Varda Haimo

Bread Obsession