I keep forgetting to write about this and I SHOULDN'T, because this is a very cool product that I’m excited to tell you about. I actually bought this on impulse and didn't expect to like it so much, but I really believe it offers an interesting solution for some people (not everybody). Do you adore getting your hands into a fresh, powdery batch of dough?  If so, maybe this post isn't for you.  This post is for people who LOVE fresh bread, but HATE getting flour on their hands.  You know – like this: (if that picture, with all those floury fingers, makes you uncomfortable, you NEED to read on!) Powdery textures usually make me nuts (sand!!!), although for some reason, I'm okay with flour and bread-making.  But I have known a few people who are totally NOT okay with it, and for them, this product might be ideal. So… what is it? It's a silicone dough bag !  I saw these a while ago, first on Amazon and then on AliExpress, my preferred get-things-ch...

Recipe here if you’re curious, but truthfully, this wasn’t an outstanding bread… possibly because (mea culpa) my barley flour had actually expired.  That may explain the slight bitter taste that only I could detect, though that may just be an effect of barley in general. What WAS nice was having my hands in a lump of dough again.  This dough was beautiful to work with; silky-smooth and damp, but not too damp.  The recipe made two beautiful bâtards, just enough for the family plus a bit left over. Served with a nondescript soup, this was not my best bread meal ever… but definitely not the worst, by far.   Slashed deeply, I thought, but not deeply enough…   … to really open up during baking or…   … to prevent a wee bit of a blowout out the side. Sliced beautifully, though!   And it was quite nice with a bit of butter.  But then, what isn’t ? So why is it that warm weather seemingly gives me this compulsion to work with BRE...

Probably my most  impromptu bread ever, partly because we were all out of flour. You can’t see the nice yellowy tint of the bread, but it really is lovely. This was actually the basic Artisan Bread in Five formula, doubled, which I made for pizza crusts last night.  I was going to substitute an equal volume of semolina to make up two cups.    But when the flour gave out, I added more than I had first intended to – there was EXACTLY enough to make the dough! I also added 4 tbsp sugar and about 1/4 cup of olive oil total, reducing the amount of water accordingly.  Oh, and I reduced the yeast to 2 Tbsp (that probably doesn’t sound “reduced” but if you double it properly, you use 3 Tbsp, which I couldn’t conscience).  It was a bit slow to start rising, but eventually doubled  nicely in about 3 hours. The pizzas were very nice, though with the oil, and probably too much sauce, the crusts were a bit soft.  After rising for about 10 hours ye...

I cheated – as I’ve been doing with the challah, I added a teaspoon of commercial yeast.  It is just too darn cold in the house. This would have been Maggie Glezer’s Sourdough Semolina bread otherwise… It could have been moister, and the crumb is far tighter than the one shown in the pictures.  Not as intensely  yellowish, either, though it was slightly more yellow in real life before my camera destroyed the colour. But I baked this in the dutch oven and was quite pleased that at least the darn thing was edible all the way through, for a change.  Considering I mixed the final dough at 1 pm and we sat down to eat this at 6 pm, it was quite fast for sourdough. Next time – no yeast and a longer rise, like maybe even overnight, probably wouldn’t hurt.  And then, probably, a slightly shorter bake, although maybe NOT.  All in all, I’m happy to have produced edible kind-of-sourdough bread.

Mmm, good!  At last, against all odds, and after several disastrous and/or ho-hum attempts, I have accomplished the seemingly impossible:  a perfectly-risen, perfectly-baked, perfectly delightful loaf of Sicilian No-Knead Bread (the sourdough variation). It rose overnight and then some, stretch-and-fold maybe around 12:30, and around 2 pm, I formed the loaf.  The combination of sesame and semolina on the crispy crust backdrop is utterly delightful. The only major flaw in this bread was too little oven/stone preheating.  I suspect that led to the stone being too cool for the initial jolt on the bottom crust.  It was ever-so-slightly soft, and I think a longer preheat would have taken care of that.  However, the bread was getting mushy and starting to spread.  Since sourdough loses definition so easily, I chose to bake it right away rather than wait for a super-hot stone.  I think it was the right decision. The recipe calls for a 475° oven...

This is the Semolina (Durum) Bread from Bread:  A Baker’s Book , which I wanted to try as an alternative to the semolina bread I have been attemping (and failing) so far. (I forgot to put sesame seeds on top and just floured before slashing.  And once again, the slashes were not deep enough!) It’s made with a “flying” sponge – which apparently means that all the yeast is in it and makes for a faster bulk fermentation.  It is faster than the other semolina breads I’ve tried, but I guess faster isn’t always better. I really think I did everything right with this one!  Okay, ALMOST everything.  I admit:  I was scared of another raw-in-the-middle disaster, so I baked this a bit longer than I was supposed to.  I was planning to give it 40 minutes at 460°.  After 30 minutes, it was alarmingly dark, so I tented it and turned the temp down to 450°. I don’t think overbaking was solely responsible for the ultimate dryness of this bread, though I ...

Why the weird dates? Click here to find out!  This week’s goal:  bake in pot! I posted a really long 6ws on my regular blog, so I’ll keep this one short and sweet.  I have a fairly new small (3 quart?) enameled cast-iron dutch oven and I intend to use it for bread-baking. I tried it out for the first time last week for my second attempt at Sicilian No-Knead Bread .  But then I had to go out while the bread was baking.  I told Ted to remove the cover after 30 minutes and bake it 10-15 minutes longer, which he faithfully did… and in the end, the bread was woefully underdone. But he did say I really must make the bread again.  Indeed, what there was of it that was edible was simply amazing:  gritty and moist and robust and flavourful, with the most crunchy crust. But I may not make this recipe.  I may see what Jim Lahey, the master of no-knead-dutch-oven-baking has to say about semolina.  Or, I took out Bread:  A Baker’s Bo...

One reason I’m philosophical about making the Hated Challah is because it’s not our ONLY Yom Tov bread option this time around…!  Yup, I’m making Roasted Garlic Potato Bread.  Just ‘cuz I love it so.  Love love LOVE the idea of swishing up a potato with yeast and flour, then tossing it into my brand-new economy-sized (aka tiny) cast-iron dutch oven (no brand name, which is a bad sign:  $30-something at The Bay). I also wanted to metricize / weigh-icize my favourite / easiest recipe for this bread. By the way, if you’re hesitant about making something with this much garlic, don’t be.  The garlic is pre-roasted, which mellows it, and it really is barely discernable in the final flavour of the bread.  On the other hand, if you want a REAL hit of garlic, consider roasting TWO heads of garlic to double the garlicky goodness.  Or roast some garlic afterwards and slather it on top! No-Knead Roasted Garlic Potato Bread Originally from Artisan Bread ...

It’s a fast day today and I decided to make a nice grainy bread like Ted likes for the end of the fast. So how does it happen that when I sit down to Google a nice, fairly quick, easy grainy bread to use up some of the ingredients I have on hand: barley flour, oat flour, bread flour, a bit of Pioneer Village whole wheat… I end up falling DEEPLY in love with a Sicilian No-Knead Bread , totally different from what I set out to bake??? I have been obsessed with Pane Siciliano for a while. For whatever reason, I love pasta and semolina and everything related to it. This bread is actually made with durum flour , which is a finer grind than durum semolina . Semolina is coarser, like corn meal. It works for bread in small quantities, and actually works well for pasta. I also keep it on hand because, like corn meal, it’s useful for sprinkling on a surface so breads don’t stick: the coarse grains act like ball bearings and your bread rolls right off! I haven’t been able to find...

Okay, so if anyone knows what could cause Maggie Glezer’s sourdough challahs to lose the definition of their braids between rising and baking, please let me know!!!  (p.s.  this also happened the last time I baked this recipe – photos here and here ) Continuing the sourdough experiment yesterday afternoon, after five hours’ rise time, we brushed the loaves with egg and sprinkled with sesame.  Naomi did the brushing.  We sprinkled the “quick-rise” same-day challahs for our neighbours with poppy seeds because they’re water challahs.  Don’t ask me why:  egg challah = sesame; water challah = poppy. Brushing on the egg:   Sprinkling the seeds:   Look how loose the braids are already, after brushing and sprinkling.  The dough looks quite slack to me now.  Overrisen, maybe???  That’s certainly never happened to my sourdough before…   After baking, quick-rise same-day challahs, nicely done: Maggie Glezer sourdough ...

How simply amazing? How perfectly incredible? Ted asked at supper tonight, “what’s in this?”  (yes, the disastrously flat semolina sourdough bread ) And I just sat there, smiling, and said, “flour… and water.” Okay, there’s a bit of salt, and I realized this bread also included a bit of honey. But basically, flour and water. You mix it one way, you get one thing. You bake it differently, you get another thing. It’s like the magical desserts we used to make as kids, in the cool hidden part of the garage:  water in a little teeny ring mold.  My brother swore if we left it in the ring mold long enough, it would turn to jello.  It never did:  I just figured we didn’t leave it long enough. We used to psych each other out, convincing each other we could turn our spit to concrete.  I’d find a blob on top of the concrete of the back steps and show him, saying, “see?  I spit there last week and now it’s hardened.” And he’d do the same, showi...

As promised, tonight’s bread (ungrateful child:  “do we always have to have bread??!?”) is a web version of Maggie Glezer’s Sourdough Semolina , courtesy of The Fresh Loaf . A few new techniques here, beyond just resuscitating my existing sourdough, which took two days even before I started this bread: 1) Using a stiff starter to raise a sourdough 2) Converting 100% (pancake-batter) starter to 50% (stiff) starter, as described in last night’s post . 3) Using semolina flour in a bread dough – very authentic, rustic, Italian, mmm… 4) Shaping baguette-type long breads I guess that’s it for new stuff. Anyway, I am sorrowed to report mixed results:  fine performance from the sourdough (yay!), nice taste and outstanding texture of the bread (mmm!)… but a yinky flat toad-shape in the final loaves (blech!), as you’ll see see.  Initial firm (50%) sourdough left to ferment overnight:   Now, in the morning, autolyse, mix and knead… and fast-forward 2 hours t...

Figured out the perfect applications – plural! – for the sourdough that has been coming back to life on top of my fridge all week.  Two Maggie Glezer recipes (my mother probably has her book, A Blessing of Bread, if I wanted to hold and caress it in person instead of just steal recipes over the Internet): Sourdough Semolina Bread , and then, later in the week, Sourdough Challah (or I might try this semolina challah variation ) But first… here’s the fun part, which I can actually do now that I have a scale:  all of Maggie Glezer’s recipes apparently call for a FIRM starter.  And my starter is pancake-battery; I believe it’s known as 100% hydration, which means that by weight I add about as much flour as water.  So I must spend a day converting the starter to 50% hydration… Here’s the technique I plan to follow. So much bread-geeky, scale-happy fun… Wait a minute!  That technique (Maggie Glezer’s conversion formula) is apparently WRONG, ...

Inspired by Matt, husband of Kath Eats, at  her blog, I attempted to follow his formula for Focaccia and Ciabatta.  He adapted these from a single ciabatta recipe out of Bread:  A Baker’s Book, by Jeffrey Hamelman, which is probably the #1 “Bread Book I Would Love to Own if I Had $50 Hanging About Doing Nothing.” I definitely like how, after the poolish stage, he splits the dough into small enough batches (1/3 for the ciabatta, 2/3 for the focaccia) that I could run them individually through my food processor.  No hand kneading!  My hands are still tired from last week’s challah . No idea why, but I didn’t have quite the amount of poolish as I should have.  Maybe lost some against the sides of the bowl?  I mean, I weighed everything going in, so… .it’s a mystery. Anyway, the two doughs turned out beautifully, but were not exactly the “pancake batter” consistency he describes in his blog entry.  I used all-purpose flour, not bread flour, but ...