An Obsessive’s Quest for Professional Quality Baked Goods from a Home Kitchen
Posted in Lean Doughs, Techniques on Nov 1st, 2010
When I first started learning how to bake bread a few years ago, my goal then, as it is to this day, was to be able to bake breads with superior flavor, texture and aesthetics. Most of the bread books I’d read at the time, as well as most of the professional bakers with whom […]
Posted in Lean Doughs on Jul 4th, 2010
If you’ve ever had the pleasure of sampling a piece of halvah, that sweet, dense and crumbly sesame seed-based confection, then you’ll understand why I’ve been enamored of sesame flavor since childhood. Sesame seeds and bread are a classic combination. Whether sprinkled on top of a loaf, as in the quintessential sesame bread Scali, or […]
Posted in Lean Doughs on Feb 13th, 2010
Alright everyone. Get out your monogrammed stationery and Cross pen. This is a bread that you simply must write home about. Up until this point, I’ve not been a real big fan of multigrain bread. Perhaps it’s because I’ve never had the pleasure of sampling a really well-made multigrain loaf. To me, multigrain bread has […]
Posted in Lean Doughs on Jun 14th, 2009
If there was one bread that could legitimately lay claim to being the bagel’s ‘heir apparent’, it would have to be the bialy. A lesser-known cousin to the bagel, the bialy is named after Bialystok, the city in Poland from which it originates. Like the bagel, the bialy has a characteristic chewy, toothsome crumb. However, that is where the similarity ends. Unlike […]
Posted in Lean Doughs on Apr 12th, 2009
With the arrival of spring here in New England (although with evening temperatures still below freezing, one would be hard-pressed to find evidence of spring’s return), gastronomic thoughts turn from the rich, substantial ‘comfort foods’ of winter to lighter, more refreshing fare. But what of those of us who would like to continue to enjoy some of the hearty flavors […]
Posted in Lean Doughs, Techniques on Feb 1st, 2009
In the previous post (More Musings on Mixing… ), I described a newly devised ‘double flour addition’ dough mixing technique which will allow a home baker, using a conventional tabletop stand mixer, to produce a well developed, nicely aerated dough nearly identical to those produced by professional bakers using commercial mixing equipment. While it was demonstrated […]
Posted in Lean Doughs on Jan 20th, 2009
Sometimes, a wonderful creation can be stuck with a terribly unfortunate acronym. When first published in the May 2005 issue of Modern Baking, Steve Barnhart of Bennison’s Bakery in Evanston, IL chose to call his richly-flavored bread, laden with tomatoes, Asiago cheese, roasted garlic, rosemary and Parmesan cheese, “TARRP” bread. Little did he know that only 3 years later, an […]
Posted in Lean Doughs, Techniques on Nov 30th, 2008
Ever since George Washington Carver first started experimenting with the peanut plant in the early 1900’s, the peanut has become one of America’s most versatile legumes. The peanut has become so ingrained into American culture that the USA team competing at the 2005 Coupe du Monde de la Boulangerie decided to present a peanut bread as one of its contest entries. Team […]
Posted in Lean Doughs, Techniques on Nov 22nd, 2008
While trying to decide upon a bread to bake for the Thanksgiving Day table, I remembered a wonderful cranberry pecan bread that I had the pleasure of sampling some months ago. The bread was a creation of a good friend of mine, James McNamara, the talented head baker at Wave Hill Breads in Wilton, Connecticut. Cranberries, being a traditional staple of […]
Posted in Lean Doughs on Nov 2nd, 2008
For those of you who are regular readers of this blog, you may have surmised that I am not a real big fan of heavily flavored breads. To me, the essence of bread baking is finding new ways to coax out the natural flavor of the wheat or whatever grain is being used. Save the ‘blend-ins’ for ice cream, cakes […]