I’m experimenting ! Yesterday I tried two things – I added ascorbic acid to the dough, plus I baked one of the two loaves in a pot. Ascorbic acid is a common bread additive, used to “age” young flour. Unlike many of the diehard purists, I have no angst at all about adding [...]
Some people talk to their plants, I talk to my bread. I honestly believe it makes a difference. My husband caught me chatting to some proving baguettes half an hour ago, crooning…”ooh, you’re a lovely dough, you’re going to get all brown and crunchy for me, aren’t you ?”. This, of course, [...]
I remembered the malt this time, and I also did a slow knead/rest/fold cycle (although I went running for a while in between) . I don’t think the dough had as good a rise, but it was beautiful and smooth and stretchy, amazingly smooth like the videos. Here’s the pics (my camera is hopeless in [...]
Did I really make that much focaccia ? Is it really that gorgeous golden brown colour ?
Yes and Yes !!
The big slab at the back was baked in a 90cm tray, the front one in a 60cm tray (that Dan gave me because it wouldn’t fit into her oven – thanks Dan ! [...]
I’ve been struggling to get my flours to perform recently, and today a miller friend told me that flours need to age for about six weeks after milling to be at their best. This would make sense, as the flours I’ve been using are all newly milled (within the last month or so) and I’m [...]
“Look at my buns, they’re spectacular ! ”
It was probably not the right thing to say as I was crouched unflatteringly in front of my oven, gazing in. But the buns were truly fine, and I’m really very happy with them. They’re based on a yeasted sweet dough recipe that I modified to [...]
I feed T2 Tuesday night, then got up Wednesday morning and made dough. After going to work for the day I came home to the wonderful smell of rising bread. The first rise was about ten hours, but the dough was in great shape. I shaped it and left it one hour [...]
Sometimes people shy away from making their own breads out of a preconceived notion that it’s a difficult process. This is particularly so in the case of sourdough, but it really shouldn’t be. If you can get the timing figured out, it’s actually easier to incorporate baking sourdough breads into a daily routine [...]
Chris and Dan…isn’t it time you made some epi ?
Why is it called “epi” ? Google turned this up :
In French, epi is the word used to describe the flower of a wheat stalk.
