Blog posts

home for the summer means 2 lunch sammys every day.  Something to look forward to!  One was semolina SD with brie, chicken and pepper jack grilled cheese with home made Dijon mustard.  Made another batch of mustard today but it tales 6 weeks to mature - not that it lasted that long :-(  The other sammy has two different SD and YW starters mixed in the same bread but each slice is a different variety.  It is served with our vapor aged white cheddar and pepper jack Mac and Cheese that is modestly flavored with Thai red curry paste.

Today I baked the bread as described on this blog:

http://www.wildyeastblog.com/2007/07/08/my-new-favorite-sourdough/

I fed my starter yesterday evening, and it had more than doubled in volume this morning. After a quick trip to the local reform store, or "Ekoplaza" as this store is called, for some whole rye flour, I started the dough following the instructions. Made half of the recipe, opting to bake two 500 gram breads. 

Hello everyone,
Franko very kindly told me about a baking textbook that was available for sale online: On Baking
(authors Sarah Labensky, Priscilla Martel, Klaus Tenbergen and Eddie Van Damme).

Not drawing as long a titular bow as you might think! These two master craftsmen have much in common.

I've been wanting to try my hand at making Phil's 100% Whole Wheat Desem bread since it sounded so simple but yet so good.  I had started preparing the Desem starter a while ago but had to abandon it when I went away for business.  I was not thrilled with the way it was turning out anyway so it wasn't a great loss.

We were inspired by Varda’s recent Priests Hat  Altamura Style Bread Revisited here: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/28663/altamura-style-bread-revisited 

For about two months, I had had my sourdough starter sitting on the kitchen counter covered with a kitchen towel. Last week, when I finally found time to look at it again, it looked like a dry cracker cookie. 

I had no idea if I could still restore the starter or not, but I decided to give it a try.

Here are 3 calculation tables for Nancy Silverton's 145% White Starter from her book "Breads from the La Brea Bakery."

I created these for anyone who wants to convert one of Nancy's formulas to baker's percentages. It's no more difficult than any other conversion until you realize her starter is a 145% hydration that's refreshed as 52.21% starter : 28.32% water : 19.47% flour.

Using these tables, you can determine the amount (in grams) of flour and water required when one of her recipes, like the Olive Bread, calls for 12 1/2 ounces of white starter.

For breakfast we had a nice YW Buckwheat Apple Pecan Pancake loose based on sweetbird's bread but using YW as leaven and milk to thin it out to pancake consistency.  Very nice!