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...

This is the same recipe as my prior ciabatta bread, minus the olive oil. This time I used a scale to measure the flour rather than a measuring cup. The recipe calls for 4 1/2 cups or 20 oz. of flour. Scooping from the flour bag measured 20 oz. with only 3 cups, so my flour is very compacted...

One of the reasons I decided to do this project is that Sarah gave me bread classes for Christmas. I attended the “2-Day Artisan Bread Workshop” with Chef Deanna Gin last weekend at Sur La Table in Palo Alto. The class was three hours each day. The first day we made English...

Ciabatta is my favorite bread, and also intimidating to make. For my first try I used the recipe from “Artisan Breads Every Day” by Peter Reinhart. It is a very wet dough that he calls a ‘no-knead, overnight-rise’ style. It was much simpler that I thought it would be,...

I’m starting off with a bread I’ve made dozens of times. I got the recipe from a Williams-Sonoma book called “Bread.” It’s probably better classified as cake, as it doesn’t use yeast. I make this a lot during the winter – it’s a heavy bread that...