MESSY BAKER

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...

I have been a bit quite of late, due to a number of things, but mainly down to two small babies to run after and a lot of DIY work at home. I am blaming DIY for the murder of my starter – the number of times I have forgot to refresh it cause I fell asleep from physical exhaustion! Warm weather and a tired baker does not bode well, I tell you that! I still have some mother starter in the fridge, so not all is lost. However I decided to take a break from sourdough breads an started looking to a quick and easy every day loaf recipe that I can do in a couple of hours in-between looking after babies and house work. I came across “ John Whaite Bakes at Home ” book and I found loaf perfection!!   John is the winner of The Great British Bake Off a couple of years back and I have been following him and his recipes for a while. I was super happy when Mr Ranty bought me John’s book as a present – its a beautiful book to look at, nice layout and tempting photos, also John’s writing style i...

After experimenting with a few recipes and making things up, I’ve decided to stick to a recipe and see how I get on. This time I went for Nancy Silverton’s Brioche bread, from her La Brea Bakery book. I’ve tried this recipe about six months ago, and got one of the best praises ever – “its just like what I buy in Paris”, from a guy who only just got back from France – you can’t get better than that, can you? I don’t think I can publish the actual recipe, cause I think that might be breaching book’s copyright, but I can tell you about the experience and get a chance to show off all the lovely photos :) The recipe uses starter as well as yeast, and I am thinking about testing out again soon, but without the yeast, then I will post the actual recipe, as it won’t be Nancy’s exact recipe any more, but my version of it – I think that would work. So, it’s classified as a three day bread, but don’t let it scare you, the actual hands on effort is very minimal, and you can easily fit it into your...