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...

My “Just South of San Francisco Sourdough” starter is about four days old now. I took it to stage 2 a couple days ago by feeding it more flour and water. It hadn’t changed significantly in that time, but it’s starting to show some action now. There are signs of foaming...

The recipe from “Artisan Breads Every Day” for French Bread is very similar to the Ciabatta recipe, without oil or stretch and folds. I was excited to try this so I could use the baguette pans that Sarah gave me. The end result looked nice (with some exceptions noted below),...

I just signed up for a two day class on sourdough breads at the San Francisco Baking Institute at the end of February. SFBI Weekend Workshops I’ll be ready to learn because I’m planning to do quite a few sourdough loaves before then – I should have plenty of questions. To...

A favicon is the tiny icon you see on your browser’s tab and menu. They are generally very small (16×16 pixels). I created a new one based on Loaf 10 for this site. The size you’ll see looks like this: A larger version of my artwork looks like this:

I tried this loaf again. The results were a bit better, but still far from right. This time I mixed the ingredients the minimum amount to get them blended with the seeds worked in, this amounted to about 10 minutes less kneading of the dough. In addition to being faster and easier, the dough...

I tried to make the Seeded Whole Wheat Boule that we made in the bread class – it was one of my favorites, a surprisingly sweet nutty loaf that would make wonderful sandwiches but is also nice alone with butter. This version came out heavy and chewy. The flavor is nice, but I get very...