By mlb, on June 28th, 2010%
Finally, Portland? Summer? Hmmm, it would be nice if it is true, although I do prefer my sunny days in the 70′s. But seriously, even I was getting sick of the 50′s/60′s and rain. So, I’ll take the sun and the 80 degree temperatures of the last few days!
To celebrate the return of Summer (and the end of June-uary?), jwa and I had a huge tomato bread salad the other night. I even had some homemade Ciabatta bread leftover (about 1/3 of a loaf) to dice up for the bread cubes. Since we have no tomatoes of our own yet, I had to get some at the store, but I found some beautiful heirloom varieties (from California, so, not too far away) at the Whole Foods by work.
My amounts . . . → Read More: Bread & Tomato Salad with Herbs
By mlb, on March 24th, 2010%
Here’s another breadmaking experiment that turned out pretty well! I’ve heard that King Arthur AP Flour has a bit more of a Bread Flour quality to it than other brands of AP flour, so since I was using Trader Joe’s AP flour, I added about a 1/2 cup bread flour to the dough flour. That’s just swapped out for the AP flour, not in addition to. It seemed to work well.
Let’s see, the original recipe did not use weight measurements, but cup measurements. I know it’s easy enough to figure out the weight and do it that way, but I was too lazy and just followed the recipe. When I made the dough, though, I held back about a 1/2 cup of the AP flour and just added . . . → Read More: Italian Bread with Sesame Seeds
By mlb, on February 25th, 2010%
Oh, look, it’s more bread! And not just any bread but some tasty, crunchy, chewy ciabatta.
This is very similar to the French loaf recipe, but there’s no sugar and you shape the dough into two, flat, rectangular loaves. There aren’t a lot of pictures here — mainly because I think I was just lazy. This, like the French round, is from the treasure trove of King Arthur Flour online recipes — specifically the yeast breads > French & Italian.
Rustic Italian Ciabatta
Adapted from the King Arthur Flour Website
1 1/2 cups cool water (12 ounces)
3 1/2 cups Bread Flour (or King Arthur European-Style Artisan Bread Flour (14 3/4 ounces)
2 tsp dry active yeast (the original recipe said instant yeast — is that something different? I used . . . → Read More: Rustic Italian Ciabatta
By mlb, on January 19th, 2010%
Ah, a new year. What better time to learn a new skill? And the new skill I have my heart set on is bread making…with yeast and everything. I have flirted a bit before with Parmesan Flatbread and Pizza Dough, but now I am talking full-on loaves of crusty, wonderful bread. I know, so scary!
Here is experiment number one. I’ll give myself about a C+.
I’ve started my bread learnin’ at the King Arthur Flour site because I happen have that brand of flour at home and they also have tons of free recipes online. I’m going to try and bake myself through some of their recipes, starting with French-Style Country Bread. I’ll intersperse the original recipe with my photos. Any notes that are mine will be in italics.
Full . . . → Read More: Adventures in Bread #1: French-Style Country Bread
