Loaves at last

French country boule. Pain di campagne. Here it is, I could not resist showing you this loaf first, before I showed how they came to be.

                             A simple dough of flour, water, starter and salt is mixed into a wet dough.

                Then after adding a bit more flour and kneading it for twelve minuets it is ready to rise.

After it rose, (due to the weather today it took twice the time I expected), it was divided, shaped and placed in towel lined bowls for their proofing.

Then, as the oven heated to 450 degrees they rose a little more. Into the oven they went in due time for their final expansion and baking.
Thirty-five minutes later they were done and ready to cool and be enjoyed.

I will admit I was hoping for a little more rise out of them, but they did pretty good. It is probably because I am new to this starter. Next time perhaps.
 So my bread has been baked and I am ready for a break tomorrow. Have a wonderful rest of the weekend.
      naturally andi

Today I made Buckwheat Batards. Paline.
            This is the starter after it sat all night. As you can see it expanded quite a bit which is great.

Today was busy, and somehow I forgot to take pictures during the process. Sorry. Due to the winter time cold the bread took alot longer to rise then I had anticipated, so once again they were not ready for dinner.

                             
                                                 Here they are fresh out of the oven cooling.

I am determined to have fresh bread for dinner, so I am trying again tomorrow. They will be the first breads out of this book which will be actual loaves not just baguettes. I am excited about that.
    naturally andi

Hugely embarrassing

A brief explanation. I made a mistake.

Last night when I fed my starter I read the recipe wrong. instead of one and a half cups of starter I only used one fourth of a cup. Big, big difference.
I even mixed it two different times because it looked wrong but I convinced myself it was not and went off to bed. This morning however, I knew. It had not risen at all and it didn't look or smell right.

     So I mixed my starter again tonight. Here it is.

  I also fed my German rye starter, and I will admit it is not very promising.

 I have cultivated more then one starter without any yeast however and I am not daunted. I am hoping that soon the pictures will show a bubbly growing starter and you will have seen how little it truly takes to make a wonderful loaf of bread.
    So, baking tomorrow, Lord willing. Good night .
naturally andi

A total flop.

Well, I baked the bread. and there is not a whole lot to say. I am not thrilled with the loaves at all. I suppose sometimes I just can't win.

They tasted fine though and we will be finishing them up tomorrow for lunch. It is probably a good thing I have siblings who will help me eat up my bread or it would start piling up fast.

So this evening I refreshed my liquid leaven starter, which is what I do the night before baking. Finally tomorrow  I will get to start baking something using no commercial yeast, which is what I am most excited about to begin with.

                   Here is the starter fed, though it looks a little different because I used buckwheat flour.

After I fed the starter I remembered that next week I will be needing a different starter from the liquid leaven starter I have going right now.  So I started the German Rye sourdough starter. Every day as I feed it I will let you watch the process.

                                                  Here is day one, just rye flour and water.

Now I am going to bed, because it is high time I did.
      naturally andi

Really, it's recipe number 2

                    This marvelous book is my constant companion right now. Really, fabulous book.

 Day three. The Ganachaud flute or La flute Gana.This rather complicated sounding bread is actually rather simple.What makes it unique is the small amount of corn flour which is added.  A polish  is used which is like a quick starter. You can see the polish here after it has sat for about eight hours right before I mix it into the final dough.

After I mixed the flour into the polish along with the yeast,water and corn flour, I kneaded it. Then back it went into my trusty glass measuring bowl. Here is the dough about eight minuets after I set it aside to rise (don't ask, I just couldn't get the camera right away).

 

And ninety minuets later, fully risen.

 

                     After cutting and patting into place, I had three beautiful loaves all ready to rise.

And that is where I shall leave you. I know it does seem a bit hard not to see them baked but that is as far as I have gotten. They are going to rise all night in the refrigerator.
                Hopefully all my work will pay off, but we won't know until tomorrow.
             naturally andi

The beginning.

Well it is January first and the start of my endever. To bake my way through Local Breads by June first. There are over seventy recipes and many of them have several step processes. I am very excited.
 Today I baked the first recipe and the only one I had previously made from this book.
                                                    Parisian daily bread, or Baguette Normal.

They are probably one of the easiest breads to make in this book and they took just four hours from start to finish. They were not out of the oven until seven or so this evening so they missed dinner. Oh well, they will be great tomorrow.
  Normally I will be showing alot more detail once I get the hang of it, but for now you can enjoy seeing the end result.
               naturally andi

A loaf I love

So I decided it's time to post some pictures. After great deliberation I chose these. Shocking is it not? These are loaves I made in September and Lydia captured them for me. This is what I currently make, just a basic all wheat levain, but I absolutely love it.