Today is Saturday, a bread baking day: I've made a batch of Low Fat Bran Muffins with apples, raisins, oat bran and All Bran cereal and later today I will be making a whole wheat recipe as a tester for author, Peter Reinhart. Perhaps I will start Floyd's Pain Sur Poolish later today and finish it up tomorrow. So many breads....so little time.
Recently I received a copy of Elizabeth David's English Bread and Yeast Cookery. This is a book that I have wanted for a long time, but it may now be out of print. I was thrilled when an internet forum friend found a paperback copy on Ebay.
I'm now making my way through this fascinating book of history, investigation, and comment about all aspects of bread cookery. I've read about grains, milling, yeast, salt, other ingredients, bread ovens and am now up to bread factories. The recipes are in the second section of the book. First published in 1977, this book is universally acclaimed to be a major source of information on the subject of English bread and yeast baking. Mrs. David died in 1992.
This book is recommended to all the bakers here that want to learn more about the history of bread making.
Cinnamon Buns - an amalgam of recipes.
Flax Seed Bread - from Dan Lepard's book. He calls it Linseed Wheat Bread, I believe. So good I made a second batch. It looks like a yam, no?
Barm Bread - another Dan Lepard recipe. Bottle conditioned beer mixed with a bit of levain. I used a combination of white, whole wheat, barley, and rye flours. Not one I'm overjoyed by, but a worthwhile baking experiment.
My pain sur poolish and the flax bread being oogled by the littlest one.