Loaves 9 and 10 were Seeded Whole Wheat loaves using a recipe from the first bread class I took at Sur La Table. They were terrible failures, though the one we made in class was excellent. I still don’t know what we did in class that wasn’t reflected in the recipe. Now that I have...

My Mom’s birthday was coming up and I wanted to show up with bread in hand for her and my sister. I hadn’t made Reinhart’s French bread since Loaves 11 and 14. I had a few minor issues with those, but I’ve learned so much since then that it seemed pretty easy now (and...

It was time to feed my SFBI sourdough starter, so I used that as an excuse to try a new batch and see if I can improve the crumb that I’ve been getting. The recipe and process was the same as Loaf 29 until the final shaping step. I did the first sourdough feeding on Wednesday evening,...

We got together with Sarah’s family and decided to take bread as a gift. I’m confident with Reinhart’s lean bread recipe now, so that was a given; but I acquired some new bannetons to try out my shaping skills with. The one I have been using at home is for much bigger loaves...

The lean bread recipe from Reinhart is now my favorite bread. In this batch I used instant yeast rather than active dry, and it made a real flavor difference – the smell and flavor of the yeast was definitely there adding a nice layer to the experience. My shaping this time was better...

With all my new knowledge I felt like it was time to take another pass at Reinhart’s Lean Bread recipe – the one I used in Loaf 16 that made me mad at bread. Success! (Mostly.) Between then and now I’ve learned a lot about measuring ingredients, and I discovered that I...

In Sunday’s San Francisco Baking Institute class we made olive sourdough, rye and semolina loaves. Like Saturday, I made fifteen loaves of bread but am only counting it as three. We had measured all our dry ingredients out on Saturday afternoon, so we were able to jump right into...

I’m mad at bread right now. These loaves, like about 50% of my other loaves, were a failure. I expect mistakes, which is why I decided to make 100 loaves in the first place, but this batch seemed so similar to my prior Loaf 14 success that I figured it was a sure thing. This was the...