challenge

August 8, 2009July 16, 2011

Le Pain Français du #BBA

Bonjour et salut à tous! La recette d’aujourd’hui est un pain français du livre «[easyazon-link asin=”1580082688″]The Bread Baker’s Apprentice[/easyazon-link]» par le boulanger célèbre, Monsieur Peter Reinhart.

And that’s all the French I’ll force you to suffer through for now. So yes, today is French Bread day in the BBA Challenge and dare I say, “it’s about time!”. Not because the other breads so far have been bad but because I’ve rather been looking forward to this one for a while.

Although my extended stay in Paris was a couple decades back, one of the very best things (although there were many) was being able to get up in the morning, go around the corner this way or down the street a bit that way, and hit a bakery to pick up a still warm fresh baguette, perhaps some almond croissants, then head back to the apartment and consume it with some strawberry jam and crème fraîche (yum!! Rather like Devonshire cream) along with a hot cup of coffee while looking out onto the bustle of Boulevard de Rochechouart.

This experience is simply not doable back here in North America as there aren’t bakeries in almost any neigbourhood and even when there happens to be one, it’s simply not a habit here to get bread for the meal and expect to go out again next time for the next loaf, warm off the shelf. No, we may pick up a loaf at the local grocery store that we don’t expect to get into for hours if not days, the quality simply isn’t the same in these factory-produced breads.

So getting to this particular loaf is giving me hope of getting a little bit of that ‘plaisir’ back, and maybe reliving a little bit of that Paris experience. You can probably tell I haven’t made this yet (I write the blog up halfway while waiting for things to proof or bake) so I don’t know how it will turn out.

Let’s get going and see, non?

Continue reading “Le Pain Français du #BBA”

August 1, 2009July 16, 2011

Focaccia!

Welcome back, dedicated followers, first timers and anyone else who’s just stumbling on this little blog! Today’s post is going to look at my first time try at Focaccia, [easyazon-link asin=”1580082688″]The Bread Baker’s Apprentice[/easyazon-link] Challenge recipe, where a whole whack of people are systematically going through each recipe in Peter Reinhart’s book as a personal challenge and to try out lots of recipes they may not ever have attempted otherwise.

With summer being half over already, we’re now at recipe #13 out of 43 total. Those who are keeping track of such things may note I’ve hopped over a couple of recipes in the list, particularly the last one which was English Muffins. The only reason I skipped that one is that I had a bunch of extra starter (“excess” starter I’d actually been feeding) and I wanted to use it up. I happen to come across Mike Avery’s English Muffin Loaf recipe which uses Sourdough, so I made two loaves of that. Totally didn’t click English Muffins was one of the next Challenges. They were similar, so I’ll just assume my batch counts. You can read that officially non #BBA post here.

Anyway… enough of that, let’s look at Focaccia. This is a very simple bread, based on number of ingredients:

A short list of ingredients for this one! Continue reading “Focaccia!”

June 17, 2009July 16, 2011

Casatiello Bread for #BBA Challenge

I went out and bought the “special” ingredients needed for this Casatiello, an Italian “cousin” of the eggy French brioche and the fifth recipe in [easyazon-link asin=”1580082688″]The Bread Baker’s Apprentice[/easyazon-link] Challenge. The 200 gram of Calabrese salami and the 250 gram chunk of Provolone cheese cost $12. Yipes, I thought, this had better be damn good bread.

Just as a test I had a few crackers with the cheese and salami, you know, just to make sure this was a good combo. Good thing we only had a couple crackers left or there would have been nothing remaining of the salami and cheese for the bread. Also gave a test cracker to my other half. Turns out spicy deli meats are not a favourite at all; now I know the salami’s all mine. Muahahaha! And so is the bread. OK, I cut the recipe in half then: one loaf should be plenty for lil ol’ me. Darn, now I’ll have all this spare salami and cheese. What ever shall I do?

I immediately put “Crackers” on the shopping list.

OK, let’s get this show on the road and see what we end up with since we know the “featured ingredients” are awesome. Continue reading “Casatiello Bread for #BBA Challenge”

May 29, 2009December 2, 2019

Brioche: a quasi-fail (#bba)

Sometimes you think you’re doing the right thing but it turns out you’re not.

This was one of those times.

Although, in reality, it’s a small problem and nothing that can’t be resolved by EATING THE EVIDENCE. Still, it would have been nice to get it a little closer to “right”. Woe is me. Let me tell you what happened…

I decided to give bread #4 in [easyazon-link asin=”1580082688″]The Bread Baker’s Apprentice[/easyazon-link] Challenge a go yesterday and of course (since you already know what the post title is) it was Brioche. There are three variations of it to choose from and I went with Rich Man’s version. This one has a whole whopping pound of butter in it, vs the Middle Class and Poor Man’s versions with a half and a quarter pound of butter, respectively.

So let’s follow along the process.

As you can see, the ingredient list isn’t exactly strange. Except that we’re not using just a little bit of that butter, we’re using the WHOLE thing. The recipe indicates that, in baker’s percentage, this loaf is 87.7% butter in the end. In case you’re thinking that means it’s 3% other things, allow me to explain in a little more detail.

Continue reading “Brioche: a quasi-fail (#bba)”

May 5, 2009July 16, 2011

Bread Baker’s Apprentice Challenge #BBA

PinchMySalt, a.k.a. Nicole of the (yummy and gorgeous) PinchMySalt blog, has set up a challenge that will surely prove tobe a ton of fun and very educational. She’s invited people, novice or otherwise, to join in and do all the recipes in the great Peter Reinhart book [easyazon-link asin=”1580082688″]The Bread Baker’s Apprentice[/easyazon-link] (Click the link or cover below to get your copy.)

The goal is to go through each recipe, in order (which happens to be mainly alphabetical) until you’ve done them all. A quick count and I get about 43 recipes in there – probably a little more if you include the small variations suggested. So if you’re like me and do a loaf or two on weekends, this means it will take the better part of a year, or a tad over 10 months, to get through the whole lot.

Now that seems like a lot of bread but if you think of it, it’s also going to get you to step off the “comfortable few recipes” track and not only try others you may not have felt confident making but you’d definitely be getting some excellent skills under your belt as you delve into areas you may have shied away from. Then show off your results on the Flickr group and post and read as you go on Twitter , using the search tag #BBA.

If you’d like to join in, hop over to the PinchMySalt blog and read up in more detail, then send in your info to be added to the challenge’s growing list of participents (as of this post date, it was up to 68 crazy bakers!). Although most people will be getting started around the same time, it’s pretty much open season and there are no set deadlines for doing any of the loaves. Work at your own pace, do as many as you like. It’s more of a SELF-challenge than a competition.

[easyazon-image-link asin=”1580082688″ alt=”The Bread Baker’s Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread” src=”http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51f8aSiQREL.jpg” align=”none” width=”250″]
Get your copy here.

You’ll also want to peruse the recipes before you decide to move on to them to make sure you have all required stock on hand. I had to go out and get some cornmeal (coarse) for the first recipe – it’s soaking as we speak…

Can’t wait to see how it all works out, looking forward to the challenge for me and the results are, one can expect, almost always edible, success or bomb.

Come on, join in. It’ll be fun!