Starting Over

I started this blog in 2011, and it quickly became (very) evident that I had neither the time nor the inclination to keep it up to date.  Instead, I turned to Facebook where I could easily post my bread and food porn pics at will :) However, now that I'm "retired", and have a renewed interest in bread baking, I've decided to start all over.  

Since my first blog, I've baked quite a bit, read a lot of books, done research on-line, watched countless bread related videos, and (hopefully) learned much.  Before I deleted all of my previous blogs (I actually saved them as drafts), I read through most of them.  I had to chuckle. While I did (luckily) manage to produce a fair amount of good breads, I had many that were mediocre at best (yet still edible), and more than my fair share of complete and utter failures. Inconsistency was a big issue for me.  I'm now ready to learn from my mistakes and give it another go.

My plan is to devote the time to developing (and documenting) a good sourdough starter, and try some new recipes from various bread baking books I've acquired.  I've amassed quite a nice collection on my iPad:

• The Bread Baker's Apprentice (Reinhart)
• Artisan's Bread Every Day (Reinhart)
• Bread Revolution (Reinhart)
• Whole Grain Breads (Reinhart)
• Bread 2nd Edition (Hamelman)
• Baking Sourdough Bread (Söderin, Strachal)
• Classic Sourdoughs (Wood, Wood)
• Flour Water Yeast Salt (Forkish)
• Tartine Bread (Robertson)
• The Art of Baking Bread (Pelligrini)
• A Passion for Bread (Vatinet)
• In Search of the Perfect Loaf (Fromartz)
• Baking Artisan Bread (Hitz)
• Bread Baking (DiMuzio)

My blog already contains some informative bread-related videos, but I'm sure I'll be adding even more from the extensive list of bookmarks I've collected over the years.

As of today, I have a new sourdough starter in the works (I'm also thinking of purchasing an authentic San Francisco sourdough culture).  I'll be documenting everything to include:

• Starter hydration
• Flours used
• Feedings
• Times 
• Ambient fermentation temperature / Starter temperature
• Observations: Taste/ Aroma / Appearance
• Mother starter information
• Dough making (hydration, mixing, fermentation, times, temperatures, scaling, forming, proofing, scoring, baking, etc.)
• Final crust and crumb observations: Taste, texture, aroma and appearance.
• Comments from my volunteer panel of taste testers :)

All of this is a plate full for sure (no pun intended), but I'm willing to give it a shot :)

Till tomorrow...

Joe