Tag: Mellow Bakers

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Bagels (yes, again!) – a MellowBakers bread

Bagels! Yes, I’m blogging about bagels again, for the third (or is it fourth?) time.

Previously, I made and blogged bagels for the BBA Challenge from Reinhart’s book and a couple of other times based on Mike Avery’s recipes for Sourdough Bagels. While the Reinhart version was good, the Avery Sourdough were decidedly better. But now it’s time for a new contender.

Stepping up to the plate for the battle to Bagel Supremacy are the bagels from the Hamelman book Bread which just happen to also be part of the Mellow Bakers challenge for April 2010. Convenient, no?

A quick look at the recipe and, bypassing things listed as required like bagel boards, I note that the steps here are pretty much the same as the other bagel recipes. Mix the stiff dough, knead for a short while, proof, shape, proof again, boil and bake. That is the SHORT version of course, but the steps are not much different from the others. Basically this tells me I’m in familiar territory so no surprises are expected. Good. Let the fun begin!

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Hot Cross Buns! First MellowBakers bread

Well, here we go, the very first bread in the MellowBakers.com group bake!

Having run to the store the day before to pick up candied lemon peel, I was all ready today to get this bread started up. The whole recipe, which is from Jeffery Hamelman’s book [easyazon-link asin=”0471168572″]Bread: A Baker’s Book of Techniques and Recipes[/easyazon-link], should take about 4.5 hours or so from start to finish – or until the buns are set out to cool.[easyazon-image-link asin=”0471168572″ alt=”Bread: A Baker’s Book of Techniques and Recipes” src=”http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51OV5EvTM6L._SL160_.jpg” align=”right” width=”130″ height=”160″]

If you don’t count the big mistake I made along the way, that is. I’ll get to that as we go along.

So as always, we’ll begin with the Mis en Place which is supposed to help avoid problems.

If you’d like to make this bread too, a recipe based on the Hamelman Bread recipe has been devised and posted by Susan on the WildYeastBlog.com so hop over there and print out a copy. Hers is slightly different but you should be able to follow what I’m doing here even if you use that recipe.

For those visiting the blog for the first time, you may like to know that almost all smaller photos (except headers) usually link to a larger version. Larger photos may not; hover your mouse over each pic to see if it will lead to a larger, more detailed version.

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Mellow Bakers’ first bread bake on it’s way!

It’s Official! Mellow Bakers is launched and we’ve picked our first group bake bread: Hot Cross Buns.

This bread happens to be a seasonal regular for Easter, although these spicy & fruity buns aren’t specifically religious in origin.

We’re baking the recipe from two sources, Bakers choosing between either the Hamelman Bread recipe on page 266 OR it’s online offspring, a variation given by Susan of WildYeastBlog.com, so even those who don’t currently own the book can join in and make the March bread with us.

[easyazon-image-link asin=”0471168572″ alt=”Bread: A Baker’s Book of Techniques and Recipes” src=”http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51OV5EvTM6L._SL160_.jpg” align=”right” width=”130″ height=”160″]Mellow Bakers is a bread baking group that’s choosing an easy, relaxed  pace where members can follow along with the main group as we select a recipe from a popular bread book (currently Hamelman’s [easyazon-link asin=”0471168572″]Bread: A Baker’s Book of Techniques and Recipes[/easyazon-link]) and an online recipe which may or may not be similar. This allows people to bake along even if they don’t have the book the group uses.

Registration to the discussion is simple and free and you can hop on and off as your schedule permits and any one can bake a bread at any time and add their own post and/or blog about it even if the bread they pick was done a long time back.

Join us at MellowBakers.com!