Much of the bread you can buy in shops in Italy remains remarkably good. Some things, though, aren't available, at least not nearby. One of those is rye bread. So I resolved to make some this weekend, using a recipe for Heidelberg Rye from the 1973 edition of Bernard Clayton Jr's The Complete Book of Breads.
Conclusion: A fine loaf, but I do need to internalise that stuff about watching the loaf not the clock. If I can do it while the bread is in the oven, why not while it is rising?
It’s been an exciting week. Monday night, the frangipani blossoms first opened, and I almost pitched myself over the parapet trying to photograph them. When the leaves first stirred I remarked that they were early and how wonderful it would be if the flowers were early too, so The Squeeze could...
Start: 95.4 Last week: 89.5 This week: 89.5
Darn! I slipped below 89.0 on two days, but this morning was up at 89.5. No cheating.
Five Farms is a wonderful, engaging audio documentary series that tracks five American farm families through the year in five episodes. It comes from the Center for...
First off, 2000 words.
The complete story. With all the great help I've had at The Fresh Loaf, I managed a pretty good hot weather sourdough loaf last time. My notes then suggested giving the shaped loaves longer at room temperature and scoring more resolutely, and so at the first possible o...
Motivation has always been a bit of a mystery to me. Sure money matters, but not too much. A few times I’ve been offered a job that I didn’t much want to do. Rather than saying no (What if they never ask me again?) I’d light on some random figure, usually two or three times the going rate, and gaily offer them that. If they did accept, which some did, the job was never any more satisfying.1 And now I bloody well had to do it.
