The dinner party the night before my friends’ CD release party was a blast. I spent the day baking four batches of bread and acting as sous chef for Jessica who created an incredible array of foods for about twenty five people. This is a bread blog, though, so I’m just going to...

Like my lean loaves (Loaf 68), the ciabatta worked beautifully. Big, puffy and light. I did one step differently than usual. Typically I shape the loaves by stretching the dough out into a rectangle, then doing a tri-letter fold. After half the proofing time I flip the loaves over. This flip...

This was a follow up to Loaf 66, my failed sourdough from the day before. I used the same starter again, and it failed to come alive overnight after the feed. I continued through the process and made two loaves from it anyway. It didn’t rise significantly during the proofing stage,...

Another set of loaves made for the Boulder dinner. They behaved perfectly at higher altitude. I tried steaming the oven by spraying the oven and loaves three times during the first three minutes of baking. My spraying technique was not very uniform, though, and I believe that is the reason...

One pair of four different loaves made for a dinner party. I followed my usual 9 Grain recipe. I certainly didn’t want to experiment with anything new right before feeding twenty people, and I was baking at altitude in a different oven than I’m used to. Everything worked as usual,...

My friend Jason had some sourdough starter in his fridge that he uses for pizza, so I tried to use it to make a couple loaves of sourdough using the Tartine recipe. I fed a bit of his starter the night before, but it failed to really come to life by the next morning. I had a lot of other...

I’ll be baking a lot of bread for a dinner party, so I wanted to get a practice loaf done a day early to learn if I needed to alter my methods to account for the altitude. We decided that baguette loaves would be best, so that we can use day old loaves for bruschetta as an appetizer if...

I’m spending a few day’s with friends in Boulder, Colorado, at about 5,400 feet of altitude. Their band – Legitimate Front – is having a CD Release Party. I’ll be baking a lot of bread for a dinner party and have read up on the impact of the altitude on baking...