A Confusion of Slashes

As promised, a couple of photos from last week’s bake. 1. Two shelves from my Blueseal oven. Same as in my previous post – the open slashes were on the lower shelf: What it does show is my crap technique; I obviously drag the blade downwards towards me making the slash deeper at the near […]

Marcus Row’s Wheat Beer & Red Onion Bread

Tomorrow Marcus is arriving to do the two-day, individual microbakery course. As guest baker he is invited to submit a sourdough recipe to be the weekly special – and he has sent his Wheat Beer & Red Onion Bread formula which you can find on his blog here. We have been busy with it already […]

Raw Bread

Here are some pictures to look at while I think of something interesting to say (although I have been a bit naughty here) You don’t see that many photos of bread before it hits the oven: And some out of the oven:

Bara Planc

Very foolishly got involved in a “discussion” about additives in bread on the Australian Sourdough Companion forum this week – http://www.sourdough.com – got called a few names that included the suggestion I was living in the past. So what bread have I baked this week? Well, months ago someone ordered 6 x 2 kilo loaves […]

Pane Pugliese

Here’s one I baked earlier. In 2004 actually – and then rewrote it in 2007: One of the most influential bread books of recent times (I have to be careful saying that – it was first published in 1985) is Carol Field’s The Italian Baker. It’s the sort of book you could spend a lifetime […]

Bara Surgeirch

I’m doing a little series of Welsh related breads for my customers this Autumn. The first one was Nina’s Watermill Loaf which I suppose is Danish given that Nina’s Danish. But she put it together in Bethesda using flours from Felin Ganol so that counts. This week is Bara Surgeirch – Sour Oatmeal Bread: – […]

Busiest Week of the Year

Two weeks ago I announced the quietest week of the year. Well I was wrong – last week was with a mere 33K of dough. This week the school holidays are over with a vengence and I baked my age in kilos – 64. It’s too much – 4.30 a.m. start, last customer 9.00 p.m. […]

Fast Food?

It’s always struck me that the most common “fast” foods are neither easy nor quick to prepare at home – I mean prepare properly, not take out of the freezer. Take fish and chips. Deep frying is an art and a dangerous art at that especially when, like me, you use a wok as a […]

Felin Ganol Wholemeal

Today’s lesson is taken from Page 18 of Bethesdabasics (ISBN 978-0-9570134-0-7 The PArtisan Press 2010 £12 – but then you have already bought a copy) – Wholemeal. I’ve always used white starter to leaven my wholemeal – not as policy but because I can’t be bothered to keep a wholemeal starter. Anyway, the 11% or […]

Quietest Week of the Year

That’s what the last week in August, running into the bank holiday, is. Orders down by a quarter to a third while customers try and squeeze the most out of the last of the summer holiday. Given that, an awful lot seems to have happened. End of the previous week I did a sourdough demo […]