German Rye Bread Recipe

...e to slash the loaf before it goes in the oven. And unlike the white bread that passes for rye in the US, this loaf is actually made out of mostly rye. It does have some white flour in it, but just enough to allow making a hearth loaf. If you’re in the LA area, I’ll be teaching some more rye classes this year. Sign up for the Los Angeles Bread Bakers on Meetup.com and you’ll get all the announcements and invites....

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Bread Ovens of Quebec Free e-book

...ok forward to having people over to give me an excuse to fire it up. Ovens, in Quebec households were associated with life itself and I understand why. If you’re interested in more information on DIY ovens, I’d recommend The Bread Ovens of Quebec along with Kiko Denzer’s Earth Ovens and Alan Scott’s The Bread Builders (brick ovens). If you’d like to see an oven built in the Quebec style, these folks have posted their experience of building one....

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Baking Bread in a Casserole Oven vs. a Combo Cooker

...zed by Jim Lahey’s no-knead bread recipe is using a Dutch oven to bake the bread. The Dutch oven harnesses the moisture in the dough to create a steamy environment. This allows the dough to rise rather than toast immediately. Commercial bread ovens (and some high-end home ovens) have steam injection systems that serve the same purpose. A Dutch oven is a lot cheaper, of course. The trick is to get a loose and wet dough into a 500ºF Dutch oven witho...

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Don’t Worry About the Boule: Bake Bread in a Loaf Pan

...ooks more like a pancake than an Instagram worthy boule. But if you’re not making bread for the ‘gram, you don’t have to do a boule or batard unless that really floats your boat. There’s nothing wrong with baking in a loaf pan. Sometimes it’s kinda nice to have a square loaf for sandwiches anyways. The pan I have is a Pullman pan made by USA Pan. It’s square and has a lid. The lid is especially handy in that you can do the first 20 minutes of the...

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Does Sourdough Offer Hope for the Gluten Intolerant?

...commercial bakeries cheat and you’re not getting the health benefits of a bread fermented with an authentic culture. You’re just getting quick fermented white bread flavored to simulate a real sourdough culture. To add to the confusion, it’s a myth that there is something unique about the bakeries of San Francisco. Lactobacillus sanfranciscensis has been isolated in sourdough cultures around the world. It’s simply the handling (long fermentation...

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