Blog posts

I have not made a bread with dates for quite some time and for whatever reason it popped into my head the other day that I needed to make one.

This bake also used some purple sweet potatoes that I baked and then mashed up.  I decided to add a little bit into the levain to see what would happen.  It did a nice job of making a slightly sweet levain and when added with the sweet dates and the rest of the purple sweet potatoes the flavor on this bake was amazing. 

Debra Wink’s English Muffins with Biga.

I’ve tried several different English Muffin recipes and keep coming back to these, magnificent flavour and crumb.

Should bagels touch when baked? 

I have been aware of Maurizio Leo through his social media postings for some time. He is a home baker, but an extremely serious one who comes from a restaurant family. Eventually, I discovered his blog (ThePerfectLoaf dot com)  and found him to be an articulate and generous mentor for home bakers. More recently, he has published a baking book. It is more on the model of Tartine Bread or Forkish's books than, say, Hamelman"s. But Leo's recipes are very well documented and look really good. His book, "The Perfect Loaf," won a James Beard Award this year. 

I first saw this type of shaped steamed bao when I borrowed Kristina Cho’s book called Mooncakes and Milkbread from the library.  My brother in law then emailed me a recipe for them out of the blue so I decided to make them.  Unfortunately my brother in law is no where near us so I’m unable to share this with him.  I’m pretty happy with how they turned out even if I didn’t do the twisting of the strips of dough prior to shaping them.

There is nothing like waking up and realizing there is no bread for your morning toast.  I ended up having to eat yogurt for breakfast!

I threw this loaf together with very little fuss, and 24 hours later there was bread. 

I mixed up what amounted to 175 g of ripe active starter at 100% hydration.

added:

290 g. of All purpose flour

204 g of hard white whole wheat

314 g of water

11 g. of salt

to the 175 g of levain. 

Today's bake: Marble Rye

Source: King Arthur Baking

Note:Increased TDW from 1.124kg to 2.248kg to make two loaves, replaced an egg with a 'flax  egg', left out deli rye flavoring due to availability. 

Hello everyone,

I've posted the latest recipe on my blog for a unique and ancient type of bread we have in Egypt called "Eish Shamsi"

The Breads of Egypt - Eish shamsi

Please see here and here to learn more about concentrated lactic acid sourdough (CLAS). 

So I’ve gradually noticed differences between my two starters, one fed only white bread flour and the other whole rye starter.  The white starter I got from Alan (thank you Alan) and the whole rye is my own now what, four years old?  It is possible the differences I am seeing are due to differing microbes that inhabit each of the starters, or they might be purely related to the type of flour each is fed.