Recent Blog Entries

I baked oodles of quick breads today. Pumpkin bread, scones, popovers, and this weird potato-apple pancake from Country Breads of the World, which I recently got from the library. A good book it seems so far.

They all turned out well. The pancake kinda fell apart because I didn't use enough flour, but it tasted excellent. Want to see?

Tomorrow I bake with yeast. In fact, I need to get some sponges going right now.

I just set a starter out last night. Made of raisin water and unbleached all purpose. Hopefully i'll manage to get some loaves outta it this time.. hehe..

This is the 2nd time i'm doing this. Earlier this year, when i knew very little about making bread, my starter looked fermented, but they didn't produce anything or make dough rise... Guess it's just some other bacteria, not wild yeast. I live in a tropical country. Hope it's ideal for wild yeast and not some other nasty microbiological impostors...

Didn't use wholewheat flour. The last time i used wholewheat flour for an overnight poolish, it was fermented till the loaves smelled nasty and tasted bitter. lol

Hmm, how do u know if ur starter is ready to be used and how long b4 u can use it, usually....

Today, I baked a birthday cake for Floyd.

Our son was a great helper.

There's our cake completed.

And served...

And look! My first baking blog entry on your site too!
Happy Birthday to you, Floyd!

"Hello, my name is Floyd, and I am a bread-aholic."

I went crazy this weekend. Kaiser rolls, a french bread, oatmeal raisin cookies, pumpkin bread, ciabatta, a raspberry cheese braid, honey wheat bread. Not to mention that I made a batch of apple butter, specifically for eating on home baked bread.

Next weekend, I've gotta stop. Maybe one or two batches but that is it.

Man, I'm pooped. Recipes for more of these may follow, but for now just a few pictures and comments:

I had some leftover raspberry sauce from Saturday morning waffles that I wanted to use up, so I made this. I used the milk bread dough from the Village Baker. I think Hensberger's milk bread that I used for the braid last time is better. Either that or I overbaked it, because it came out fairly dry.

The buttermilk bread. Haven't tried it yet. It is basically this recipe. Nothing fancy but should be quite good toasted with apple butter.

Hamelman's ciabatta again. I added a little (1/2 teaspoon) extra yeast because I wanted a break from dense homemade bread. It didn't come out quite like ciabatta, but it wasn't bad.