Unlike sourdough, I think I have the ciabatta down now. I used a few grams too much water, which gave it a hydration of 82% instead of the recipe’s 80%. Shaping it was almost impossible, and moving it after the first shaping didn’t work at all (I was supposed to flip it over to...

My sourdough class is another two weeks away, but I thought I’d try another loaf with my starter (which I’ve been feeding and keeping alive in the fridge). I used the same recipe from Reinhart’s Artisan Breads Every Day that I used for Loaf 15, and the resulting failure was...

As the first step in my new Scientific Method for Learning How to Bake Great Bread (there is no acronym for this), I’m comparing the three flours that I’ve been using – Whole Foods Organic, King Arthur, and Gold Medal. I made three versions of 1/3 size batches of the French...

I’m mad at bread right now. These loaves, like about 50% of my other loaves, were a failure. I expect mistakes, which is why I decided to make 100 loaves in the first place, but this batch seemed so similar to my prior Loaf 14 success that I figured it was a sure thing. This was the Lean...

After my sourdough bread failure made with my starter (Loaf 15), I’ve hypothesized that my starter had gone stagnant. I restarted it by taking a portion of the mother starter and feeding it with flour and water. It’s living in the fridge now, but after a day of living on the...

This weekend I tried to make sourdough bread with the home grown sourdough starter I made. It failed. The final dough never rose, so I suspect the mother starter had lost its power. Step by Step Following the directions in Reinhart’s “Artisan Breads Every Day,” on Saturday...

The bread I baked last night was delicious last night, but by sandwich time at lunch today the crust had gone soft. Very disappointing. To remedy that problem at dinner tonight I put the boule into the oven at about 300° for between five and ten minutes. The crust became wonderfully crispy...

This is a follow-up attempt from Loaf 11, my French baguettes that only tasted okay. This time I used the same recipe, but corrected what I thought were the errors from last time. The dough came out too sticky again, so I added a bit more flour until it became tacky. I handled the dough more...

Loaves 12 and 13 were both challah breads made from different recipes. Loaf 12 was from Peter Reinhart’s Artisan Breads Every Day book, and Loaf 13 was from Williams-Sonoma Collection: Bread. I’ve made the W-S challah quite a few times, and this was my first time making the...

The second loaf of challah I am making for my “Recipe Bake-Off” is from the Williams-Sonoma Bread book. I’ve had this book for a long time and bake a few things regularly from it, challah being one of them. It’s become a tradition around Christmas for us (what?!). This...

I’m making two different versions of challah bread this weekend in my own “Recipe Bake-Off.” This version is from Peter Reinhart’s Artisan Breads Every Day book. The dough is mixed, then does a slow fermentation overnight in the fridge. The next day it is shaped and...

The “Just South of San Francisco Sourdough” starter has been moving along. For Phase 3 I fed it and moved it into a measuring cup so I could more accurately tell how much it had grown. What started as 3/4 cup grew overnight to 1 3/4 cup. It was right on schedule, so the next step...