Autolyse

Been meaning to try this for ages. Mixed two campagne doughs to produce 1K loaves. Held back the salt in one dough for 30 minutes. Apart from that both doughs had three short kneads after mixing and went in the fridge overnight. First surprise. Next morning the autolysed dough had very noticeably risen more than […]

That Dough – Again

This is also weird – the fascination with one straightforward wet, white dough. This is the 80ish% hydration dough that I use primarily for pizza which started through a miscalculation of a yeasted dough from The Bread Collective – a confusion of US/Metric/Imperial cups, that sort of thing. Usually I knock it up and put […]

Weird Dutch Bread II

Gert’s been made homeless. Stupid, stupid politicians. The geezer who owned the B&B that Gert was managing and where he ran his restaurant is an Australian guy in his sixties. He’s lived in the UK for years, has been a successful businessman and generally contributed to the good of the country. But his permit to […]

Butters’ Bakery

As well as the crucial matter of pressing the apples, another reason Gill & Jay invited a couple of friends over for the weekend is they are setting up a new microbakery and the equipment is in place! Unlike my stumbling into bakedom an additional kilo of flour at a time, Jay has actually done […]

Scrattin’/Pressin’

Who but Jay would have so many boomerangs he can spare some for kindling? However, let’s start with the cider as I always suggest when I’m at Jays. Who but Jay would have a Romany caravan full of apples? One of the main aims of the weekend was to get his apples into liquid form […]

Bakin’/Scrattin’ Live from Jay’s 1

This weekend there’s a little gathering at Gill & Jay’s in Trefriw – not sure the percentage of cidermaking to baking but that’s what we’re doing. Just to be efficient I got my baking in first. Thursday was Thanksgiving so the famous Bethesdabakers Thanksgiving bread had to be produced for the American customers who also […]

Reasons to be Cheerful

One thing that cheers me up is getting feedback from students. Couple of weekends back Richard Beaston cashed in his Christmas present (last year’s!) – a baking course voucher bought by his obviously discerning partner. Here’s the picture of his first bread back home after the course. Can you argue with that?

Fragmented Fermentation Technique

Not again, I hear you say. Old Mick trotting out yet another photo of a 2 Kilo Pain de Campagne. But no, this is different, honest. And it introduces a radical new fermentation technique which I am calling “Fragmentation”. Busy weekend. Guy called Richard came to do a bread course which his partner had bought […]

Sourdough?

Browsing through the baking books on Kindle last night and I came across “Baking Real Sourdough Bread” by Dragan Matijevic & Penny Williams. I don’t need another bread book but at under £2.00 it had to be worth looking at. On first skim it looks like a pretty good sourdough introduction but (you knew I […]

Boules?

As a home baker, your job is to produce one perfect loaf which you photograph and wonder if your slashes could have been more assured and if you could have got slightly better oven spring if you’d lobbed a couple more links of red hot chain into the water tray at the bottom of your […]