Here we go again: I want ciabatta, so our friends get ciabatta. Like my 9 grain, I have the ciabatta down pretty well. This is straight from Reinhart’s book and has never given me any trouble; plus it tastes wonderful. This bread is great for sandwiches if shaped as rolls, and makes...

Time for some sourdough bread again. Last time I made it at home I compared cooking it in a dutch oven verses my regular hearth oven style. The dutch oven won. I tried the same comparison again this time to verify the findings. Also, even if the dutch oven is better, I can’t bake two...

Three of these four loaves were made for friends. To paraphrase a line about boat owners, “The only thing better than baking bread is having a friend who bakes bread.” It isn’t any more work to make four loaves of bread than it is to make one or two. When I decided to make a...

Something strange is going on that I don’t understand. Just like my sourdough loaves in Boulder (Loaf 69), this batch of sourdough bread had no flavor. I used my home sourdough starter and all my normal processes. I suspect that even though I fed the starter the night before to get it...

Batch two of three batches of bread of a dinner party for our ETC-SV students. This loaf was my standard Reinhart Lean Bread – no chances taken when guests are coming over! The loaves were flavorful and popular, but did suffer from the reheating I did right before serving. Full details...

Last April we had all the ETC-SV students from that semester over for dinner, something we’ve done each semester for four years now (see Loaves 43, 44). I baked individual loaves for each person to take home afterwards – something I swore I wouldn’t do again… And I...

It’s been about two weeks since my baking binge in Boulder. My two-pass tri-fold approach on the ciabatta bread gave me an idea for a breakfast bread. I decided to try folding cinnamon, brown sugar and raisins into the bread for sweet bread. Sarah isn’t a big fan of raisins, so I...

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,...