bread Post Archive
In Agile Cooking, Chris King (b | t) describes the process of making sourdough bread at home. By comparison with agile software development, he laments the waterfall nature of making a loaf of bread. I loved the article, but I disagree with his conclusion. I’ve been trying to make bread every week or two for the last year. My first…
A roundup in photos of the last six weeks of breadmaking. This set was made from a single batch of white dough using recipes in Richard Bertinet’s Dough. Nice to produce four different things in around three hours. The middle two were my first attempt at baguettes using just yeast dough. They both tasted fine…
Making brioche is quite a fight. The first part of this video shows what I mean. It’s like trying to knead vaseline. So. Many. Eggs. So. Much. Butter. But it comes together, in the end. I let it proof out in the garage, at 7 or 8 degrees Celcius which was probably the only way the dough…
My two older children spend every other weekend with us, and it’s become a bit of a tradition to start the weekend with home-made pizza. Nessa bought me Franco Manca: Artisan Pizza for Christmas – their suggestion of sourdough bases was the trigger for me to start bread-making. These were this week’s left-overs. Sunday lunch.
Plain white sandwich loaves are pretty straightforward. Ingredients: flour, yeast, salt, water. Method: Mix. Leave. Slap-and-fold. Leave. Divide. Shape. Rest. Bake. Cool. Eat. Takes about 15 mins of effort. Total time start-to-finish is a little over three hours.
After finishing the Rye, Caraway and Raisin loaf, I felt ready to try another fruited bread. We’re only a couple of weeks away from Easter. Hot Cross Buns. I followed the ingredients list here, but used the manual sweet dough preparation technique from Dough. It can be difficult to keep all of the dried fruit…
Sage -> Pork Lemon and Thyme -> Chicken Rosemary -> Lamb Mustard and Horseradish -> Beef Coriander -> Thai Basil and Oregano -> Italian Garlic -> Everything Caraway? Rye and raisin bread. Trust me on this. I’ve always associated caraway with weird-tasting puddings and weird-tasting Northern European breads. So I was a bit sceptical when…
Light Rye Having got the hang of the basic technique, I’m now trying to extend my range. This was the first time I used rye. Great crust colour and flavour – and it made a change to bake a ciabatta. This was the same recipe, but baked as a boule. Baker’s Yeast…
Attempt 6 tw;dr (too wet; didn’t rise) Attempt 7 75g starter, 450g flour, 375ml water, 5g salt (84% hydrated) Changed to Canadian Strong Flour No-knead method Used banneton and cloche Some scoring didn’t cut through the surface Crumb development good where the loaf could rise Cooking time was fine Attempt 8 75g starter, 450g flour,…
Attempt 4 300g starter, 350g flour, 240g water (77.23% hydrated) Lively starter, autolysed, Bertinet slap-and-fold – but very very over-worked as it took me ages to get the technique. Messed up the final fold. Poor seam. So-so crumb. Nice oven spring. Attempt 5 300g starter, 350g flour, 240g water (77.23% hydrated) – as before Followed a…