MESSY BAKER

I finally caught up with all by blog posts and actually doing May post on time – yay me! This month’s project is Borodinsky bread – bread I used to eat a lot as a child. I remember my grandma coming back from a work trip with five loaves “just for the weekend” – so as you can see its been a family favourite for a while :)  I love baking rye bread, and have baked a number of German style loaves, as well as made up my own recipes using rye flour, but for some reason I never tried a hand at making Borodinsky bread. Well, this is the whole point of this project – to learn new and to re-discover old recipes!  I wanted the bread to be as authentic as possible, so I decided to do all of my research in Russian, mainly looking for GOST (ГОСТ in Russian) recipes. GOST is a set of technical standards maintained by the Euro-Asian Council for Standardization, Metrology and Certification (EASC), and in the old communist days, all bread production had to comply with that standard. ...

I really need to get better at this – its past mid-May and I am only just posting April project. But – the good thing is that I just finished May bread, so next post shouldn’t be too far behind.  My planning was completely off this month – I decided to bake Colomba Pasquale – a traditional Easter cake – for Easter celebrations this year. But, what I forgot to do is to check my calendar - I celebrate both Catholic and Russian Orthodox Easters – both of them fell at the beginning of the month this year, plus I had booked a trip to Russia with my little ones at the beginning of the month, so there was no way on earth I was going to finish my baking on time.  Anyway, I got there at the end, and to make up for the lateness, I’ve made five (yes, five) loaves just to test out different recipes and shapes. I tried using very traditional as well as more available ingredients, tall and round panettone cases and shallow and wide “dove” cases, and I finally came up with something I a...

Month three of my Bread-o-lution project, and to be perfectly honest I am finding it a bit hard to keep it up. Partly due to quite difficult breads I have chosen and partly due to, well, being a working mum. I have also started a parenting (read ranting) blog which is taking some of my time as well.  So, this month’s project is pumpernickel – this is not new new recipe for me, as I have tried it twice before, but just wasn’t happy with the results.   I made my very first pumpernickel following Nancy Silverton’s recipe – it turned out way too dry, and with very gummy feel to it – most of it ended up in a bin :(  The second attempt was made following Andrew Whitley recipe from “Bread Matters”, and even though the result was edible, it wasn’t quite what I was after – the bread was too light, not enough salt in it and it went all moldy only two days after I baked it.  This time I was determined to do it right and spent most of the month doing the research. ...

It has taken me a while to write this post up, partly due to time commitments, and partly due to the type of the bread I’ve chosen to make. February project is Pain de Campagne – a traditional French sourdough loaf. I have first seen a recipe for Pain de Campagne about I guess 10 years ago, and as a beginner baker I found it really interesting. Its French – I love all things French, its sourdough – which sounded difficult and I love all things difficult and it requires basket/banneton proving – I didn’t even know what a banneton was at the time, so that’s sounded intriguing enough – and yes, I do love a bit of intrigue … I am afraid to tell you this, but now 10 years on, looking at a recipe as an experienced baker, I find this recipe slightly boring. I won’t blame you if you give up reading about now, but if you a bread nerd like moi (see, French! :), then read on. First of all, I must say that I was surprised at the number of different variations on the basic recipe – for a recip...

I need to get on with researching my February project for my Bread-o-lution, but that would require a bit of digging for the right kind of a recipe. Meanwhile I was running out of bread and stumbled upon a box of sesame seeds in my kitchen – literally, it fell out of a cupboard on top of me :) I am a bit fan of sesame seeds – who can resist a golden bun with tiny amber sesame drops on top? I always imagine sesame breads to be soft and fluffy, with slightly sweet taste. I was imagining it so much, I started drooling – before long I decided to create a recipe that combines all of my memories of a perfect sesame loaf.  Sesame  Sourdough Loaf  200g 100% white sourdough starter   400g white bread flour  100g wholemeal flour  290g mineral water  20g honey  20g sesame seeds  1 heaped tsp salt  20g unsalted butter, room temperature  Sesame seeds for sprinkling (optional)   My wonderful shiny Kitchen Aid has had...

January here we come – this is the first month of my Bread-o-lution project as committed in December last year. I decided to start with something nice and simple – and what could be simpler that a good English loaf. Mind you, it’s a fancy shape one, but at the end of the day its just a plain white loaf. Being a sourdough freak I wanted to see if I can make a sourdough version of Cottage Loaf, and was surprised to find virtually so sourdough versions of this recipe. I did find some very useful advice on a number of sites – “ Fig Jam and Lime Cordial ” (cool name by the way) has a lot of good tips on hydration and shaping. “ Signor Biscotti ” is full of wonderful pictures and a commercial yeast recipe. “ Carmella Cooks ” and “ The Nourishing Gourmet ” are the only recipes I could find that use sourdough instead of commercial yeast. I researched for the last three days and discarded any recipes that used any type of sweetener - sugar or honey, and any recipes that gave directions ...