Bread Tasting

All roads lead to Bethesda as the Druids used to say. And so it was that Rick and Maggie Coldman – Mair’s Bakehouse – came to lunch en route from Hamburg to Cwmduad bearing a big bag of goodies from German bakeries. The pastries got scoffed for breakfast before the camera came out but look […]

Buns

Still messing about with the pizza dough here that I try to have available all the time in the fridge. Turned half into a great pizza yesterday, divided the remainder into four, shaped roughly, flattened and put back in the fridge for a second 24 hours. I think burger buns are tricky. In restaurants 99% […]

Le Pain Quotidien (2)

Flying in formation – Nina’s Danish Peasant Bread. She is a great blender of flours. This one is mainly wholemeal rye with some white and wholemeal wheat + 120% white levain. Nestling in the top is Phoebe the dog’s share and a small Simple Danish Rye taster (another Nina recipe), left-over dough from this week’s […]

Ciabatta 1 [(Scraps2) Pizza 6]

Same pizza dough as in Scraps below. 48hrs in fridge. Sunday a.m., woken by Christians ringing church bells at 7.45 a.m. (*!+@!!”#$%^&*!!!). Turned on oven, tipped dough onto flour surface, cut into four, roughly shaped, stretched, put on baking paper. When oven up to heat, dimpled, baked 20 mins = ciabatta (or are they jamless […]

Euro Twenty Twelve

It’s OK. You are on the right blog. Honest. Is it possible to get bored with baking? That’s a big question but, when you have a customer like Gert, it’s quite difficult. As you will know from previous posts, Gert runs Oren, his little restaurant in Caernarfon. Normally his menu zooms from one country to […]

Not a Pretty Sight

Being in France with no scales has given me the bug for experimenting and improvising. Beginners particularly are forever asking what to do with excess starter. Ditch it, I would say. I probably use more flour for dusting than a lot of people use for baking. Most of this ends up in the bin anyway […]

Scraps (Pizza No 5)

I’ve settled down to a formula of Flour 100%, Water 78.2%, Starter 25%. Salt 1.5%. So 700g dough = Flour 342g, Water 268g, Starter 86g, Salt 5g. Few short kneads, into oiled box for 2-3 hours with the odd hourly stretch. Then into fridge for at least 24 hours. In the domestic fridge was arfachickenbreast, […]

Royal Progress

One last push ….

French Cups

It’s been strange coming back and scaling everything by weight again after a month’s improvising in France. And for all of you who don’t have faith in your starter, after four weeks in the fridge, refreshed my starter Sunday evening, looked healthy Monday morning, Tuesday evening had 3 kilos + for a 20 odd kilo […]

Fete du Pain

A bit of research before we went to France turned up the first ever Fete du Pain in Bordeaux 15/16 May. So I got in touch with la Ronde des Quartiers de Bordeaux for some info – received a slightly bewildered reply which included an application form to enter Best Baguette de Tradition contest but […]