All The Bs

Is this good bread or is this good bread: I can say that because it’s not my bread. It’s Baker Biker Ben from the BBC. Makes you sick. Bleedin’ amateurs turning out bread of that quality. Ben is one of the few bakers who have made it to all five of the annual baking events, […]

Beet This

It all started when I was making Vampiros for a Halloween special. Vampiros, as you know, is a spicy adaption of Tomato Bread with Sundried Tomatoes – add smoked paprika, chile and a good whack of tequila to the tomato sauce. This year I wanted to find a way of getting the dough a brilliant […]

Bourbon

It’s that time of year again when my American customers start to clamour for Bethesdabakers’ famous Thanksgiving Bread: The secret ingredient? Bourbon. Soak your cranberries in a good shot of whiskey for an hour then complete the soaker with orange juice. Rye starter, flour mix of white, wholemeal wheat and rye, plenty of pecans. Sam’s […]

Meanwhile, Back in Transylvania …

… night was fast falling over the Borgo Pass:

Pain des Pommes

Sitting on my kitchen window sill for the last three or four years is a jar with chopped apples in the bottom plus water plus a little sugar. Sitting in my garden is a solitary Cox apple tree that I bought for Sue as a Valentine present quite a lot of years earlier. When the […]

Green Pest Control

Here at Bethesdabakers we take our pest control obligations very seriously. But sustainability and carbon reduction are equally weighty considerations and here we try to combine the two. Take the fly killer in my workroom, cum office, cum flour store, cum junk room. It doesn’t need a power supply, batteries or even winding up. It […]

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 […]