One of the things I want to do on this site is to share with you the (many) mistakes that I make as a home baker. Not all breads are beautiful, not all loaves are perfect. For one reason or another, I often mess up and want to use this space to share with you pitfalls you will likely face when baking in your own kitchen.
Fresh bagels with a little schmear on it are hard to beat. Hard to beat unless you add blueberries to the mix, that is. That’s exactly what these are, delicious New York Style Blueberry Bagels.
So what makes a bagel NY Style? I looked this up and found that there are predominantly two types of bagels in North America. The Montreal Style and the New York style. The difference between the two types of bagels are subtle but notable. While the Montreal bagel is made with malt, sugar, no salt, and is boiled in honey-sweetened water before being baked in a wood-fired oven, the New York Style bagel contains salt in addition to the malt and sugar, is boiled in plain water and is baked in a standard oven.
When I started baking about 10 years ago, I really didn’t know what I was doing nor what I was trying to do. I was so excited about making bread at home that whatever happened to come out of the oven was a tasty surprise. One day, my neighbor Dave introduced me to what is now one of my favorite bread books of all time, Bernard Clayton’s “Complete Book of Breads“. It was also exciting that we were living in Bloomington, Indiana, where Clayton also lived. We always talked about hunting him down to get his autograph and maybe a get a little first hand wisdom but we never worked up the courage to do it.
Ciabatta is one of those breads that go well with just about anything. It can stand up on its own or, as is most commonly done, be served as the vehicle for olive oil as a light hors d’oeuvre. As ubiquitous as Ciabatta is at restaurants, believe it or not it is a relatively new type of bread. Developed in 1976 by a baker in Verona as a response to French baguettes, the Ciabatta is an elongated flat loaf characterized by its many holes and light texture. It was only brought to the US in 1987![1]
[Read more…] about 24 Hour Ciabatta
When I was first introduced to semolina bread, I was in awe. I usually thought of semolina in terms of pasta but after trying it in bread form, I was hooked. The bread had a light golden color and a soft, fine crumb that craved to be toasted and buttered. Whenever I get my hands on semolina flour I always look forward to making a loaf that stands up to that vision.
This past week I went to a local grain store and purchased a few bags of different flours. Some bread flour, some wheat flour, and gladly some semolina flour. I was a little dismayed when the vendor wasn’t sure where the flours came from (I was hoping for some local flour milled in Pennsylvania) but nevertheless, home I went.
I fed my sourdough starter and adjusted a recipe from Jeffrey Hamelman’s “Bread” book for a semolina sourdough loaf. The recipe yields two loaves and is quite easy to make. If this is your first time using semolina, you’ll be surprised by how it transforms from granular flour to soft dough.
