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...

A small refinement on 100% Whole Wheat Loaf 59, this time with pictures! This version has 4.5% brown sugar instead of the 3.6% I used last time per the Reinhart Whole Wheat recipe. I mixed 1kg of dough the night before, putting it into the fridge around 8:45pm. I removed it from the fridge...

On to something new! Now that I’m getting confident with my sourdough, I decided to try the Tartine approach to sourdough. I followed the directions from Chad Robertson’s Tartine Bread for the basic country bread as close as possible. I started by feeding my starter the night...

This is the last of the deleted picture loaves. We had a friend over for BBQ dinner so I made my reliable Reinhart Lean Bread. Round boules shaped in bannetons is the simple approach I took with these two loaves, and they looked and tasted great. I was a little concerned when they...

Part of my collection of accidentally deleted pictures. Since Eric was going to be home for a few days I made a bunch of ciabatta sandwich rolls. I followed the same Reinhart ciabatta recipe as before with modifications in the shaping phase. The dough was mixed the evening before and spent...

Part of my collection of accidentally deleted pictures. My son Eric came home for a few days so I made sourdough for dinner and sandwiches using the SFBI recipe that I’ve done before with my Tartine starter. I made a regular batard loaf and two smaller sandwich loaves. I let them proof...

Okay, let’s get this out of the way right up front: I screwed up.  I got behind on my bread postings and forgot that I hadn’t dumped the images of loaves 59 to 62 off my camera. Then I went off on a short trip and reformatted the card to start fresh. Damn. No pictures for the next...

Loaf 58 is an experiment in shaping. We wanted good sandwich bread and love the 9 Grain loaf I make, so I wanted to shape it in a loaf pan rather than a banneton or on a couche. The dough is mixed the night before and left to autolyze in the fridge overnight. I used flour from a 10 pound bag...

This is my first loaf in about three weeks, so I just make a simple lean bread using the Reinhart recipe. No big news here – it was easy to get back in the saddle again and make a nice loaf. The texture seemed a bit lighter than I remember it, and it didn’t have quite as much...

No new loaves for awhile because I was traveling in Europe. I didn’t ask my wife to feed my starter for me while I was gone, and I left with it already a week old. So this is what starter looks like after three weeks in the refrigerator: It’s very ugly. BUT, the odor was not so...