varda's blog

One of the great things about TFL is that when I see an ingredient at the store, even though I've never used it before I know it will be good because of all the posts I've read.   So it was the other day while shopping at Costco, when a bag of Deglet Noor dates jumped into my basket and came home with me.   I've only eaten dates a few times, and don't like them so much as I find them too sweet and sticky.   Nonetheless, there they were and so had to be used.    The next day, I built up my rye sour way too much getting ready for market day and was

Today, I attended my first farmer's market as a vendor.   Yesterday I baked around three times more bread at one time than I had ever done before.   Miraculously it all came out fine with no kitchen disasters.  This morning I finished up the baking and drove a couple towns over to Carlisle.   I had never been to the Carlisle market before.   I had two reasons for picking it.   One, I figured, given that Carlisle is pretty sparsely populated, that the market might be small enough for me to be able to manage.   The second is tha

I have been making a lot of baguettes lately.    I had a particularly promising one the other day - took a bite, left the room, came back to find the dog eating it.   That's what happens when you make a lot of baguettes, I suppose.   

Recently I decided it was time to try to learn to make baguettes.    My strategy has been to make baguettes every day, both to get practice and to try different approaches.    Since I am making them so frequently and often tucked in the middle of other bakes, I don't always have good records.  That hasn't been much of an issue, as these are practice baguettes and haven't been that terrific.    The other day, though, amidst baking other bread, I made the tastiest baguettes ever.    Unfortunately my records were incomplete, and

Lately I've been baking a lot, as I decided my family's appetites did not quite coincide with either the type or amount of bread that I wanted to bake.   This has led to a conundrum, as I have occasionally made a great many loaves and then ended the day with no bread in the house.   Suddenly my barely tolerated bread has become a must have, so I have to make up the difference with a few more loaves after the big bake is over.   Yesterday I made these loaves which all went to good homes by the end of the day.  

This morning I baked a sprouted wheat loaf.   I had made my first one the other day and it was an ugly duckling but delicious, so my plan was to make a prettier bigger one.   I succeeded on the bigger.

Some time ago I posted on a chocolate borodinsky.  This was scaled to a mammoth 1.4 Kg to fill my 4x4x9 Pullman pan.  That's a lot of Borodinsky particularly since certain people in my domicile eschew high ryes.   (And eschew doesn't mean chew.)   So what do you do if you want a  bit of Borodinsky, or you are baking for other folks who love carbs, but not that many of them.   One cannot piece Borodinsky loaves as you could say a pain de mie.  Paste doesn't piece.

It was late.   I had three breads to prepare for.   This meant two starters, two soakers and a biga.   My eyes drooped.   I was almost done - once I made the second soaker, and then the biga, I could go to sleep.   Yet something was wrong and I didn't know what.   I looked down.   Instead of holding a bag of whole wheat flour, I was holding a bag of whole rye flour.  And I had already made the biga and the soaker for whole wheat sandwich bread with rye instead of wheat.   No rest for the weary.

Recently I posted on a bake of Syd's Asian style pain de mie, and Janet commented that she was going to make it with her white whole wheat home milled flour.   I decided to try something similar.    Instead of white whole wheat, I used my golden flour which is home milled hard red whole wheat with some of the bran and some coarse flour sifted out.    I believe the closest official name to this would be high extraction flour, probably around 90%.

When Floyd posted his Hokkaido Milk Bread I just had to try it.    Finally I got to it, and tasted it and then thought, I've made this before, even though I knew I'd never made a bread called Hokkaido bread.    I went back to the databanks and found that a year and a half ago, I made   Syd's Asian Style