June 2010
1 post
3 tags
And We're Done...
This marks the last week of the CSB in its current form as we are moving from Berkeley. Appropriately today’s blog entry is about the final stage of the bread baking process – the actual baking. This is when all of the hard work and balancing, tinkering, mixing and shaping pay off. If you did most everything right what you end up with is a gorgeous, full loaf of bread with beautiful color, a...
May 2010
4 posts
The Final Proof
Hmm…this sounds like something my mathematician husband should be working on. But turns out it has some relevancy to bread baking too.
Last week I spent a whole lot of time discussing shaping and why it’s your last chance to get things right with your bread. Its all about walking the line between tightness and slackness in the dough, and getting it just right so you get a good final rise in...
3 tags
Flour + Water + Yeast + Salt = BREAD!!
So last week I gave a sense for how you begin the transformation from flour, water, salt and yeast into a loaf of bread. It’s a multi-layered process, one that I am still learning, and one that I am told by bakers is never fully mastered. There’s always more, always a new technique to try, always a new combination, always a way to push the ingredients farther, extract more flavor, or create a more...
7 tags
Getting from Flour & Water to a Loaf of Bread
Bread making/baking can seem alternately simple/easy and complex/complicated. On one hand, bread is made of just four ingredients: flour, water, salt and yeast. Four of the most common ingredients come together to create one loaf. Nothing special, nothing fancy (unless you want); nourishing, satisfying and delicious. On the other hand, four ingredients is not a lot to work with to create...
4 tags
What the heck does a starter look like anyways?
I realized that I’d been going on and on about wild yeast starters and hadn’t shown one yet. So here’s a couple shots of what they look like.
I keep two starters – a stiff and a loose one. The difference between them is the amount of water used each time I refresh them. The different hydration levels create environments for different types of yeast and bacteria. Bacteria in stiff starters tend...
April 2010
1 post
4 tags
The Wide and Wild World of Wild Yeast Starters
In the beginning of March I took an intensive weeklong Artisan Bread Baking class from the San Francisco Baking Institute. I had taken my first class there back in November where I learned many of the fundamentals of bread baking. The class was an amazing experience and I vowed to get back and take the next class as soon as possible.
SFBI was started by Michel Suas, a world-renowned pastry and...
March 2010
1 post
3 tags
The Last Week in Bread (for now, at least)
So this week constitutes the final week of Round 2 of Pandora’s Bread Box Community-Supported Bakery subscription. This was a great round; 8 weeks, 3 days a week for 21 subscribers. It was demanding but rewarding. The number and type of subscribers expanded (ie they’re not just all close friends anymore) and more and more challenging breads were included in the weekly boxes.
I’m...
February 2010
5 posts
Rainy Day? Perfect, I feel like baking anyways!
It seems like just about every day I’ve done the bread box this winter, this has been the atmosphere. Wet, rainy, a little dreary. All in all, perfect weather to feel like staying in and baking. Keep it coming!
So for Week 7 I tried to respond to subscriber demands, more wheat bread offerings, some healthier snacks. And corn bread that I had made earlier and gotten rave reviews on.
The...
5 tags
Cinnamon Raisin Bread, Pitas and Lemon Bars, Oh...
This week’s box is a little more on the sweet side with Cinnamon Raisin Bread and Lemon Bars. The Pita Bread is the only non-sweetened baked good (though the Cinnamon Raisin Bread really isn’t that sugary at all).
The Cinnamon Raisin Bread is a light loaf bread perfect toasted for breakfast or an afternoon snack. It was a special treat was I was growing up and despite the fact that I...
3 tags
The Italian, the Buttery and the Healthy
That basically sums up the bread offerings this week of Pane Siciliano, Petit Brioche a Tete and Ginger Pear Bran Muffins.
The Pane Siciliano is by far one of the prettiest breads I make, with its ruddy textured crust in a gentle S-curve (and not the kind that is a danger to motorists). It takes 3 days to make and that’s not just work for work’s sake. There are not many ingredients...
7 tags
Fabric8 and Street Food...A Match Made in Heaven
Friday night marked the third outing of Indilicious, Brian and my street food cart. We had been invited to set up shop at Fabric8, an art gallery and store in the Mission. Its a great synergistic idea they’ve got; they have an open house/art reception which brings in people, we have our twitter followers to attract people and between us we generate lots of buzz and business.
The vibe for...
2 tags
Week 4 - Spring has Sprunch (err Sprung)
I love February (and not just because its my birthday month) but because in the Bay Area it means the beginnings of spring are here. Now, granted we are completely spoiled in California that our real winter lasts all of 2 months (and really December is not that bad), but when February comes the days seem a bit brighter, color seeps back into the landscape and there are things to smile about as you...
January 2010
13 posts
2 tags
What's that line around the block for? The...
Wow, so last night was the Underground Farmer’s Market, organized by ForageSF. For those of you unfamiliar with it…its a organized venue in which small, local and home producers and urban farmers can sell their goods. Vendors seem to be people who can’t or don’t produce on a large scale (ie providing economies of scale that might allow them to go legit) and in that vein,...
7 tags
The Wide World of Multi-Grains (and More...)
While wheat and yeast can be fascinating, it is the accent ingredients that are so often full of interesting bits of history or lore. This week’s selections of the Multi-Grain Batard, the Oat Currant Scones and Potato Rosemary Rolls are no exception.
Some interesting tidbits on ingredients found in this week’s bread…
Zante Currants
‘Currants’ are one of the oldest...
Bake Sale...The Results Are In!
I want to give a big thanks to everyone who helped out with the bake sales, including people who purchased, people who distributed and people who helped me bake. It was a big week between the bake sales and the CSB; in the end I made 49 baguettes, 105 brownies, 96 bagels, 50 biscotti and 12 multi-grain loaves.
And together we raised over $300 for Doctors without Borders and Haiti relief efforts....
1 tag
Oh, Bagel...
Now, I do not put baked good selections into the weekly CSB box if I have not thoroughly vetted the formulas. This means I have successfully made the item at least twice and consider it of good enough quality to give it to all my subscribers, for whom I keep the highest standards.
And then came the dastardly bagel…that chimera of my bread world; an inscrutable, devious foe who laughs in my...
CSB - Week 3 Bread Options
Next week’s choices are as follows; play around with your 3 points as you see fit… * Multi-Grain Loaf (1.5) - This is a 1lb slipper-shaped loaf with a combination of whole wheat, rye and bread flours and sprinkled liberally with flax seeds, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds and oats. These are almost entirely organic (only the whole wheat flour is not). * Potato Rosemary Rolls (0.5) -...
2 tags
Ooga Ooga! There's a Bake Sale Going On!
Tuesday afternoon the first bake sale went down. Having baked 21 baguettes, 90 brownies and 48 bagels (none of which came out, stay tuned for a bagel fiasco post), I made an early CSB drop-off and headed into the City.
Ooga Labs, an Intertube business who’s signature is caveman-language website names, hosted me and the employees brought it. I was sold out of baguettes and nearly all of the...
5 tags
Baguettes, Bagels and Brownies for Haiti!
I figure its time to bring out some old-fashioned ideas that may seem quaint but also may just get the job done. That’s why I love the idea of bringing back Victory Gardens, home canning, making your own cheese, and baking bread. And the traditional bake sale that has been relegated to the often uninspiring, but precious efforts of 2nd graders seems like something I can also get behind.
And so in...
1 tag
Try-Outs for the UFM
Today were the try-outs for the Underground Farmer’s Market (UFM), designed to test whether our goods are really up to snuff. As always I veered towards overkill, baking 4 types of bread by 2pm (French Sweet Baguettes, Multi-Grain Batards, Dutch Crunch Rolls and Bagels).
I drove the still-warm bread lovingly packed into my “delivery box” to San Francisco only to knock on the wrong door and be...
3 tags
Week 1 of the CSB – Baking for 20 is Awesome!
The first week of the CSB is always the most stressful and the first day of the first week of the CSB is the stressiest of them all. True to form, the schedule for the first day turned out to have some built-in convergences between the recipes (formulas as bread recipes are called). I have to slice the biscotti, mix the first batch of Anadama bread and pre-shape the Dutch Crunch rolls all at...
4 tags
Guerilla Street Food Strikes Again
Sunday saw Indilicious (me, friend and hubby) shlepping our chafing dishes, folding table, hand-cut business cards, Chicken Tikka, Aloo Gobi, roti and half a dozen condiments to Precita Park in SF. A lunchtime impromptu street food event took over a small section of sidewalk, and transformed the cold winter day into a boisterous meeting of friends, residents, family and, of course, puppies! The...
Boot Camp
Knowing that practice is the name of the game when it comes to anything, particularly bread, I designated the week before the CSB began as Bread Boot Camp. Designed as an all-out assault on my kitchen, Boot Camp tested the resiliency of my KitchenAid (which, haha, broke the following week), the ruggedness of my oven, the capacity of my refrigerator, and my own skill and fortitude as a would-be...
“The secret of getting ahead is getting started.”...
This blog is dedicated to a new path I have been carving out for myself as a food producer and entrepreneur. That’s the best title I can come up with. I am not a farmer, though I have been putting in a time here and there at a local garden – and I am not a chef, though I absolutely love to cook – and I am not a baker, though everyone knows I’ve been trying. The past 6 months I have been trying my...