Blog posts

Learning baking baguettes was so much fun! I chose to postpone my endeavor for soybean baguettes, since the muslims where I live are about to enter fasting month, and l'm planning to do bakesale selling breaking-the-fast treats and loaves for pre-fasting meals. I need cosmetically acceptable enough result for photos to market my bakes.

I am very new to sourdough, as I have only made 2 loaves (1 Biga/poolish and one with a bit of starter from a friend).

I want to be able to make my own sourdough starter, but as of yet every single one of my starters either fails to double after two weeks of feeding every 12 hours or becomes so acidic (smells like ammonia, this smell usually starts within 4-5 days after I begin my starter) that it fails to rise at all.

I will try to be as thorough as I can in my explanations and how I do it.

This is how I usually make my starter:

120 grams bread flour (pilsbury)

23Feb

I love adding cheese to my bakes. Usually, I cut the cheese in small pieces or chunks and fold them in, but I decided I wanted to use shredded cheese and added some to the starter. I used Parmesan and smoked cherry cheddar cheese. The combination really imparted a noticeable cheese flavor and when the bread is toasted or grilled it smells amazing.

Just out of curiosity started an experiment with some no name(*) white flour (soft wheat) from the supermarket, protein 11%-12%. Nothing special, I assume the amount of gluten is rather below average.

I'm curios, how far I can go. Started with 5% whole wheat, 5% rye, 65% hydration, cold final proof. I'd prefer warm final proof, but was not possible because of time constraints.

I had half a bag of fine cornmeal left in my pantry, and thought of making some corn bread. I consulted Ian's 2014 post on Broa de Milho before baking, and decided to use rye (10%), cornmeal (40%) and bread flour (50%).

Another recipe from the Gluten Free Gastronimist this time without the rice flour and now using quinoa and chickpea flours. So, no grains!

This is their grain free bread:

I'll be the first to admit to having multiple gluten free failures! Many kinds of ugly monster breads, in fact.

Nearly a year ago, Martadella wrote about making a lovely gluten free bread.

This is the recipe:

A back to basics day with two simple bakes.

First - gluten free crunchy-outside-chewy-inside almond cookies that take 5 mins to mix and another 13 to bake.

To make 30 small cookies

Arthritis threatens me with an eternity of store-bought bread unless I can find a stand mixer that can knead dough.  I have 2 Kitchenaids that are only good at teaching dough to pirouette.