Hamelman - Pain au levain

My starter became two years old. It still amazes me that some water, flour and natural yeast can make a dough rise. Here's the rather simple to make Pain Au Levain bread by Mr. Hamelman. I love the simpleness of this recipe. The taste is always superb, this picture isn't but hey, take your 'Bread' books and make this bread!

Corn Bread - Hamelman

Made on request for the smallest member of the family :-)

Country Bread - Hamelman

Pine nuts & figs & wine - Dan Lepard.

Delicious bread from the Dan Lepard book. One of my all time favorites!
Yummie!

Ready to bake...

Pain Rustique (because I <3 it) - Hamelman

Finnish Rye

Country Bread - Hamelman

It has been a while since I made this. Came out nice I think :

Bread

It has been a while since I posted so here's a pic of some straight dough breads.

Pain au Levain - Hamelman

I've been making the second batch of 'pain au levain' bread because I like working with Levain if I have the time for it. When you are able to make a decent work schedule this is doable. Sometimes I suffer from bad planning.
I adjusted the formula a bit, I did use less water than I should have, this to avoid the dough ball becoming too flat, I had my spouse complaining about this.

In this particular case, I started working on these breads at 7PM. I had a piece of sourdough from my previous batch, and I figured that at 1AM they would go in the oven. Wrong!
At 1AM the loaves were still under proofed.
So I went to bed for less than 5 hours, fired up the oven at 6AM and baked them at 7AM.
So they had this long and slow fermentation, which will have had a good influence on the taste. Haven't tried them yet, looking forward to taste them.

Vermont Sourdough rye - Hamelman

I totally love this bread! I love the taste, I love the firm crumb. This bread is pretty awesome! I have made it a few times past weeks.

Dan Lepard - Quick white loaf

I made a variation on the quick white loaf of the Dan Lepard book.
I love it, used some rye in it, and the optional millet he mentions
in the book. Awesome!

Lenôtre

A while ago I was in France to visit the annual flea market in Lille. We have been there several years before and love to stroll around, and visit some great bakeries and enjoy some awesome French baguette.

While I was walking around I've noticed a copy of this Lenôtre book. The title is :
"Faites votre pâttiserie comme Lenôtre."
It came out in 1975! It has similar recipes inside like the other Lenôtre book I own, slightly more modern though.

What is also cool about this book is that all the recipes are made by chef Lenôtre's daughter and is aimed at the beginner (even though the book warns that some recipes are for the advanced baker.)
Second cool thing about it is that is is used, has stains, has scribbled notes in it, and almost falls apart. That is also something I like about it, the previous owner has used it!

I am a purist, and that is why I like this book so much. It contains all the great classic recipes like : croissants, brioche, pains aux raisins, éclairs, gaufres, Saint-Honoré and a ton more. I took a (crappy) picture using my built in iSight webcam, the quality isn't that great but I admit I was too lazy to take the digital camera and get a decent shot of the book. I hope you still enjoy though.

This weekend I made the brioche dough from the book and it was delicious. I also made a loaf containing dried fruits soaked in Rum and that gave a delicious flavor after baking. The alcohol evaporates and the taste stays inside the loaf. Great!
I also made some small rolls and a large brioche.

I know it might be impossible to find this book (which is totally written in the French language) but I highly recommend it to anyone who likes to see how some classic pastry/bread was made like 30 years ago. Highly recommended!

Bread of Love and Honey Oat meal bread

I both made these loaves before. I love the 'Bread Of Love!' The scent of red wine, the pine nuts, the figs who give the loaf crunch. This loaf is incredibly tasty, so I had to make it again.

Is there anything negative about this bread? Well if you don't mind spending a few bucks then there is no problem at all. But for those of you amongst us who don't want to spend a rather high amount of money this is a quite expensive loaf. For instance, the organic pine nuts alone costed me like €4.00 for 100 grams! The bottle of wine was like €3.00 and the figs also €4.00. So the total without flour or salt is like €11.00.

I don't mind paying this kind of money to create something delicious like this, but some people might find this just too much money for a loaf.
I guess that if these loaves were sold at a bakery a lot of people would not buy them because the baker would have to ask too much money to cover the expenses.
Even though this is not the cheapest bread out there, it sure is one of the tastiest!

Whole wheat with multigrain soaker- Hamelman

This is a very, very tasty loaf. I did replace the oats with sesame seeds and let them soak overnight.
I made two loaves and one of them had a little darker crust which gave even a more deeper taste. I like this one a lot.

80% Rye - Hamelman

This is a weird dough. I thought the Finnish Rye dough was weird, but this is even weirder. Best thing to compare the dough to is 'Play Doh!' clay. The dough has 10% high gluten white flour in it.
I like the taste, and structure a lot. The crumb is very moist. I am not sure about the tiny holes in the crumb, but I am guessing because of almost no gluten inside the dough this is normal.

Normandy Apple Bread - 2

Hey, I made the Normandy Apple bread again. I did this with an intention. Tomorrow it will be the first meeting of the Apple Computer User Group I am a member of. The first meeting we usually have something to eat like an apple pie or anything with apples in it. So I was thinking this would be a good idea to bake the Normandy Apple loaf again and share it with the rest of the user group. So, I know I posted this before but here's a pic once again.

Craquelin (Sugar bread)

Mmmmm, this loaf is yummie! Again, brioche like dough, added pearl sugar makes this loaf very sweet. Most of the pearls are melted and that taste is simply delicious!
I would not be eating this every day, but once and a while it won't hurt.
Craquelin

Raisin-currant bread

The dough is the same like brioche but with less butter in it. Great sweet taste. I did not have raisins enough so I added some currants too.

Finnish Rye once again

I decided to make the Finnish Rye again because I finally able to get my hands on some molasses (kudos to Rachel.) So I got the molasses in the mail together with some other stuff and I had to make a loaf that had molasses in it. The Finnish Rye was my choice, so here it is once again.

I think the result is very nice and I also used finely ground whole rye flour instead of the coarse-grained I usually buy.
I love this bread.