Hearth Bread
Five Pounds of Sugar in a Three Pound Bag (or Loaf Pan)
Nov 12, 2012I’ve been having a mismatch between my desire to use Baker’s Percentages in grams and American loaf pans. Baking in grams is one of the best things to ever happen to me. OK, that might be an exaggeration, but it’s still a big deal. Weighing everything on a digital scale eliminates measuring cups and measuring spoons, it’s faster, it’s more accurate and there isn’t anything to clean up afterward. What... Read More
Chocolate Color Baguettes
Nov 08, 2012Back to baguettes and color. These have an almost chocolate color, and they lack that nice golden glow that I like in a baguette. It must be something to do with oven temperature and caramelization. These used the same Central Milling AP flour that I used in a batch of baguettes a few weeks ago, and I did a pre-ferment overnight in the refrigerator. So many variables. These we OK,... Read More
The Accidental Brick
Nov 07, 2012Not the construction kind. The bread kind. I have been on a pretty roll for the past month or so with by bread baking. We haven’t had to buy and bread from the store, and everybody is really happy. It’s interesting how quickly you lose your taste for store bread (even the good stuff) after you have been enjoying home baked bread for an extended period of time. I am... Read More
More Raisins-Raisin Bread
Oct 24, 2012Or compared with a previous version of this formula — raisins in my raisin bread. haha. And better swirls too. Everyone is enjoying this bread. One fun thing I’ve been doing is sharing a pre-ferment. I combine 800 grams of water with 700 grams of whole wheat flour, 20 grams of salt, and 5 grams of yeast and let is rest overnight in the refrigerator. Then, the next day, I... Read More
Bananas to Flour
Oct 22, 2012I’ve been making a lot of banana bread recently — balancing my production of cinnamon raisin bread to compete for our family’s consumption of sweet tooth snacks in the afternoon. Tomorrow is cinnamon swirl bread day, and I have a pre-ferment going for that. Quick breads are fast and easy compared with serious leaven bread, but I did want to add one thing. Reading through banana bread recipes on the... Read More
Raisin-Free Cinnamon Raisin Bread
Oct 15, 2012What do you do when you are baking, cinnamon raisin bread, and you don’t have any raisins? Punt? No. You use a mix of chopped, dried apricots, and dried cranberries. And it came out really nicely. This is my second attempt at Peter Reinhart’s Whole Wheat Cinnamon Raisin Bread, and it’s a keeper. I made a couple of modifications to my first batch, including adding more cinnamon to the dough,... Read More
Critiquing my Baguettes
Oct 12, 2012I had some fun trying new things yesterday baking baguettes. Sadly, it was raining, so I didn’t fire my outdoor oven and had to do this indoors. In general, I have a couple of takeaways. First, flour matters. I’ve been experimenting with different flours for my white hearth bread and have been using a lot of Trader Joe’s All Purpose Flour, and try as I might, I just couldn’t get the... Read More
Getting Even More Organized
Oct 10, 2012My Oxo storage containers arrived from Amazon today, and everything is looking pretty good. Mise-en-place gone wild. Still, everybody must have experienced the pain of dumping a bag of sesame seeds on the ground while rooting around trying to find the whole wheat flour. Right? So I think it’s worth the effort. These are flax seeds, sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, dark rye flour, sugar and raisins (empty) in the middle... Read More
Cinnamon Raisin Bread
Oct 08, 2012This Cinnamon Raisin Bread is from Peter Reinhart’s Whole Grain Bread cookbook, and it came out really well. Peter describes this as a transitional recipe for a bread that lies somewhere between a nice whole wheat bread, and a sticky cinnamon roll. In general, you make a nice soft whole wheat bread using milk and an egg, plus honey, olive oil and cinnamon, and then flatten the dough and cover... Read More
