I decided to try and overnight rise the other night.  I used a partial whole wheat recipe from one of the books and managed to totally misread the directions.  I had thought that the bread was to rise overnight in the fridge.  Turns out that it was supposed to proof overnight.  So I started at…

Day 4 still looks good.  It came almost back to the 2 quart line.  The directions today calls for removing all but 200 grams of the mix.  To do this, account for the weight of the container ,which in my case was 274 grams, and then add the 200 in for the mix… Should have…

Well it darn near made it to the 2 quart line so Im thinking Im in good shape.  It said that the mix might smell sort of like alcohol which it did so that’s another good sign.  The directions for today said to once again throw away 75% of the mix and then add another…

I’ve baked quite a few loaves at this point all using the same recipe so today I decided to try and bake two loaves – one in the dutch oven and another on a pizza stone.  The theory behind the dutch oven seems to be that it helps the bread steam as it bakes and…

So the directions this morning called to throw away 75% of the mix and then feed the starter with another 500 grams of flour and 500 grams of 90 degree water.  So I just used my hands and pulled what I estimated to be about 75% of the mix out… Then used my handy dandy…

After my first failed attempt at making a starter I thought I’d try again.  Once again – Im taking the recipe from the second book I bought.  It seems to be more straight forward in terms of listing actual measurements rather than relying on ‘feel’ for consistency and other things.  I started it this morning…

Returning from a week long vacation I was anxious to try my hand at baking bread again.  I was a little suspicious that I might have just lucked out and ended up with a miracle loaf the first time around.  This time I made the recipe as stated which created two loaves.  The first one…

Im pleased to announce that my first loaf of home baked bread has turned out!  What a relief after failing so miserably on the starter.  I had decided that I needed to just start baking rather than putzing around with starters which is something that I’ll tackle again – but likely not something I should…

Up until very recently I had no idea there was a specific type of flour for bread.  I knew there were other types of flour beyond your standard all-purpose flour but I never really had a need or use for them.  My sister (not the one that talked me into buying needlessly large storage containers) a…