The 80% hydration dough in the Bread Formulas section of this site is probably the most viewed of the bread recipes. I’m never sure why because generally my formulas have unfashionably low hydration levels and it’s not even a genuine 80%, a mere 78 point something. Thought everyone else was doing 90-100%+. Never mind. Its […]

You could laugh at this bread. You could call it a bit gimmicky. Pink bread to attract the crowds. But my version, with raw and cooked beetroot and a good smack of cheddar, is serious bread as well as being photogenic (and jokey). I don’t even bake it that often, but when I did a […]

A few posts back (Halot,etc) I told you about finding the bread book of Babka Zana, the Parisian jewish bakery, when we were in Bordeaux back in May. Since then I’ve been working on their savoury breads. So we start off with Hallah of which they have three variations, La Hallah or Pain de Shabbat, […]

This all started on Saturday (it’s now Thursday). Sue cooked a 1.5K joint of pork from Moro Easy – the meat marinated overnight in orange juice and cumin and then braised slowly in the oven for about 3 hours. Very delicious. On Sunday, with some of the remains, I cooked Arroz com Porco (or at […]

Funny the places baking can take you. You might have seen that I am currently exploring Babka Zana, the book of the Parisian Jewish bakery of the same name. The owners, Sarah Amouyal and Emmanuel Murat, have a modern approach to Jewish food traditions of the Mediterranean particularly North Africa and Israel. So, in addition […]

Been baking 200g baguettes for ever. The French would probably say they aren’t proper baguettes which usually start around 300g but they’re a lot better than the stuff we’ve bought in France in recent years, sad to say. Now that I’m only baking for the two of us, I’ve settled down to turning them out […]

In France in May we made our annual pilgrimage to Mollat, Bordeaux ‘s great bookshop and, as usual, headed straight to the cookery section and homed in on the bread books. This is what was available this year. Right at the moment they seem to be going in for massive volumes of the Complete Book […]

Why not? Have left-over lamb from Sunday lunch, obos in need of using, pizza dough in the fridge. Seems obvious … Peter Reinhart method. Press out dough in baking tray, sprinkle with little chunks of cheese (cheddar). Prove for about three hours during which time make a tomato sauce, saute obo cut in smallish cubes, […]

MY TAI A drink concocted to commemorate the 5th anniversary of the death of my niece Tai, killed by a drunk and drugged driver in New Zealand. (The name is obviously stolen from the famous cocktail Mai Tai – rum, Curaçao liqueur, orgeat syrup, and lime juice – but then everything about this drink has […]

Been messing around with Peter Reinhart’s Perfect Pan Pizza book for a good couple of years now so I’ve reached that nice stage where I don’t have to to think too much about the basics. Mix a batch of my 80% hydration dough a day or two before baking and ferment in the fridge. 400g […]