Blog posts

Well, now he’s done it.  I was fool enough to rise to the absurd challenge of dabrownman the other day.  He can be a bit like that mean childhood cousin from out of town who visits and convinces me to stick a fork into an electrical socket.  Well, I’m past that age, thankfully (I think), but I still fell for the old fork-in-the-socket routine.  Ouch!

My Father-in-law is staying with us for a couple of weeks so my Wife made him some Sunday Gravy with meatballs, sausage, and pork and beef braciole.  So of course I needed to make a good dipping sauce bread to go with it.

I decided to make a version of a bread I modified from Peter Reinhart's Italian Bread from "The Bread Bakers Apprentice".  He uses a Biga in his formula but I used a AP levain at 66% in mine.  The starter is a pretty high percentage of the overall formal at 44% but in the end it all worked out great.

Several weeks ago, I started a new rye sour - Lucy's way [http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/43019/really-dark-old-school-sprouted-pumpernickel-–-memory-barbra]

I've had my eye on this one for a while and finally got round to it this weekend. A savoury loaf made with Spelt and Semolina. The sesame flavour is strong, but not overpowering. The dough was soft but after umpteen folds, I thought it looked strong enough. I let the boule rise overnight in the fridge again and it looked a bit flat by the morning. But once it was in the oven, it came into its own. It makes a great sandwich with smoked black forest ham and a sharp aged cheese.

On my last day of high school, I decided to make each of my teachers a loaf of bread. One of my teachers was vegan and from Milwaukee. For him, I made this challah in which the liquid used is a lager and the eggs are replaced with avacado (and a tiny bit of lemon to prevent browning), giving the dough a unique green tinge.

I shaped the dough into a trefoil knot, which I was convinced would look cool. It didn't.

 Before baking, I glazed the dough with some molasses mixed with a tiny bit of water.

The No Muss Mo Fuss rye starter is getting up there in age.  This week it was stored 14 weeks and smelled very sour.  Lucy decided to try out some new things just for fun and because she is just that way.  There is nothing she hates more than doing the same thing over and over.  Once is enough for her most always and she has no fear.  She does seem to do a lot more different things than most that way.

I've lurked on this website for quite a while and decided it was probably time to get an account.

I had recently gotten ahold of something called matsoon, a culture similar to yogurt or kefir, but from Armenia. Being the sort of person I am, I was determined to bake something with it.

  I was in the mood for a nice pastrami on rye with melted cheese and a good sour pickle.  I was going to just make my Jewish deli rye formula, but I remembered I had not made a rye porridge bread bread yet, so why not combine the two and hope for the best!

I have to say the taste on this one is fantastic and it's one of those breads you can eat with nothing on it.  The high hydration and  porridge component made this breads crumb super moist.  I love the onion bits dispersed with the rolled oats, rye chops and cracked wheat.

Weekend brekky on the beach with a frothy coffee.

Notes and the recipe.

I found the recipe here - http://treatntrick.blogspot.com.au/2012/05/spiral-apple-bread.html

The things I have changed:
1.  I did not roll out the dough, it did not really work for me, so I kneaded the dough again and proceeded as follows:
Just rolled by hand into a short, fat sausage and cut of pieces that I rolled into smaller sausages. It was easier and quicker to make the roses like this.

A break in the action.  I'd been so busy lately with my batard thing that I neglected the simple pleasures of rolling out a few baguettes.  So I took a time-out and decided to go back to the first (and easiest) of my baguettes formulae, the one that kicked off the whole thing for my attempts at achieving a good result - Bouabsa style baguettes.