lack of posts

Well, as you may have noticed, there has been a significant lack of posts lately. I assure you, there is a good reason...

I got a new job! This new job is in my old stomping grounds, which means I need to move! We've been furiously packing and getting ready for move day (friday/saturday). Next week, in the chaos of unpacking, I'll try to get some updates in.

See you on the other side!

Back to norm next week?

With Easter and a bunch of work and other thing popping up, I haven't been able to get blogging bumped up in the prioirity list. Hopefully after this weeken things will return to normal.

I will also comment on the htc incredible....dreamy!

Crazy week!

This week has been non stop fun.  Lots of work "things" happening, trying to recover from Easter weekend makes for a tiring week.

I had a really great time at my Mom's for Easter.  I actually ended up baking a challenge bread without really meaning to, so I'll get that written up tomorrow (I hope).

The plan for this weekend: Get a new Bed!

No challenge this week

Howdy Bread lovers!

There won't be a challenge this week, as I will be out of town for Easter Fun!  I will still be making bread, but not in a challenge-y way.

I will be making Lambropsomo, Lefse, and hopefully dinner rolls.  I will get some pictures and post them..as long as the loaves turn out ok :)

I made the list up BEFORE I checked the weather forecast.  Thankfully, most of the breads take a few hours to proof, which means I'll be able to spend some time with family outside, and make delicious foods for our easter dinner.

See you next week!

BBA Challenge Round 8: Cinnamon Raisin Walnut Bread

The Challenge Bread

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="500" caption="Mmm...Delicious bread of nutty raisin-y goodness"][/caption]

This week, we're making Cinnamon Raisin Walnut Bread!

Round 8 is done!

Well I finished up the Cinnamon Raisin Walnut Bread on Sunday, and I'll get the post up later this week.

I think I might slow it down a bit, as baking a challenge loaf every weeks means I don't get a chance to make "normal" bread.  I'll still try to post once a week, but I'll probably start talking about the challenges I'm facing (bread not rising as well as it used to) and how I plan to attack them (check yeast, ensure good kneading).

Hopefully, this blog will not only talk about what I'm doing with bread baking, but about baking in general and how to fit it in to a busy lifestyle.

Bread on!

BBA Challenge Round 7: Cinnamon Rolls

The Challenge Bread

This week, we're making Cinnamon Rolls!



[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="374" caption="What's left of the Rolls after ONE day..."][/caption]

BBA Challenge Round 6: Ciabatta

The Challenge Bread

This week, we're making Ciabatta.

A Little History

I first remember having Ciabatta about eight years ago, when I ordered a sandwich and they asked me if I wanted it on Ciabatta...not knowing what it was I just agreed that is sounded good.  It is now one of my favorite breads to eat (and now make!)

The Ingredients

I went with the Poolish version of this recipe, as I haven't really made anything with a poolish yet:

• Poolish
  
  
  
  • Bread Flous
  
  
  • Water
  
  
  • Yeast
  
  
  
  


• Bread Flour


• Salt


• yeast


• Water

Corn/Dairy Free changes

Since this a Primary loaf, there isn't much to it, hence no corn or dairy.  The taste and character comes from the baking.

The Shaping

The night before the baking, I made up the poolish and let it ferment in the fridge overnight.  This allows the yeast more time to break down the flour into delicious gluten.  The next day, I combined the ingredients with the poolish.  The dough is very wet and can be hard to work with.  The wetter, the harder, but the bigger the air pocket are.

Once I was done kneading the dough, I transferred it to the Generously floured counter.  I shaped the dough into a rough rectangle.  I then sprinkled another generous portion  of flour on top of the loaf.  Then, grabbing opposite ends of the dough,  I picked it up, and let it stretch to about twice the original size.  I placed it back down on the counter, and folded it up like a letter.  I lightly misted it with oil, covered it in plastic, and let it rest for 30 minutes.  I then did another stretching session.

After the stretching, I took a heavy Towel and setup a couche: a floured towel used to create crusty breads.  I let the loaves proof until they had "noticeably swelled."

The Baking

I preheated the oven to 500 degrees.  I put a cookie sheet on the topmost oven rack, while moving the other rack to the lowest setting.  Once the oven was up to temp, I put a cup of hot water into the steam pan, and put the loaves on the lowest rack.  After 30 seconds, I opened the oven, and sprayed the sides with water to generate more steam.  I did this twice more at 30 second intervals, and then turned the oven down to 450 degrees.  I baked the loaves for 10 minutes, and then rotated them 180 degrees and continued to bake them until they reached an internal temperature of 205.   I then placed them on a cooling rack for about an hour.

Results and My Final Thoughts/Notes

The end result was good.  The crust was fairly crusty, but not too hard.  I didn't get as big of air pockets as I wanted, but they were pretty good.

Again, I think one of the main things I learned this week would be timing.  I think I let the dough sit more than 30 minutes, as it kind of swelled out and almost off the pan!  Then, I think I over compensated and didn't let the loaves proof long enough on the couche.

As the saying goes, there's no bad homemade bread....unless it burnt.

Up Next…

Next week, we're making Cinnamon Rolls!

Comments? Suggestions?

So what do you think? Sound good?  Anything I should change/do better?

First BBA fail!

I had my first fail this weekend with regards to the challenge! This weekend I was attempting to make ciabatta and bought yeast since I was up in Rochester for the weekend. I left the loaf in the sun for a couple of hours to let it rise. I came back and reized the loaf had not changed shape or size.

So here's my tip of the week: check the date on your yeast BEFORE you start baking.

I'll be making a second attempt this weekend to NOT h e a fail.

Stay tuned!!

Let's go Ciabatta!

I'm working on the Ciabatta right now, so hopefully I'll have some news shortly!

BBA Challenge Round 5: Challah

The Challenge Bread

This week, we're making Challah.

A Little History

Challah is a Jewish celebration bread.  It is braided and sometimes a braid will be placed on top of a larger braid for a big celebration loaf.

The Ingredients

This one is pretty straight forward:

• Bread Flour


• sugar


• Salf


• yeast


• Vegetable oil


• whole eggs


• egg yolks


• Water

Make sure to save the egg whites to use as an egg wash later on.  I just put them in a bowl and covered it with plastic wrap and put it in the refrigerator while I prepped the loaves.

Corn/Dairy Free changes

There are no diary or corn ingredients in this bread.  No changes!

The Shaping

This is the first loaf that has required "real" shaping.  On the first non Giant celebration loaf, I took the dough and split it into three equal pieces.  This is where the scale was handy: Just because two pieces looked about the same, they often weren't.  I took the pieces, and shaped them into Boules, and let them rest for ten minutes under a towel.

After the mandatory rest period, I began shaping them into nice, long ropes of dough.  I started by rolling them on the table, slowly pushing them out from the center of the dough mass.  I that mostly worked, but I experimented with other methods as well.  I tried holding the dough "upright" and rubbing my hands like I was trying to warm them up, letting gravity pull the dough down.  That didn't work as well as the horizontal roll, but it wasn't bad.    The last method I tried was holding the dough with my hands at nine and three o'clock and slowly shaking the dough like you to a vending machine trying to get your stuck Doritos to fall.  While shaking, I slowly pulled the dough out, eventually ending up with my hands about three to four feet apart.  That seemed to be the best method on that day.

After I had three equal length ropes, I began my braiding from the center of soon-to-be loaf.  I braided down until I couldn't effectively make more cross over manuvers.  I then rotated the loaf and did it to the other side.  When I flipped the loaf, I needed to invert my braiding method: instead of taking the rope on the left and brining it over the top of the middle rope on its way to the right side, I needed to put it under the middle rope to keep the braid looking neat and not end up with a funky bump in the middle.  It took my brain a couple of attempts before I finally got it right.  I think it ended up looking pretty good for my first attempt.

The Celebration was very similar, but instead of one braid there were two: one on top that was half the size of the bottom loaf.  I did this by taking the dough and cutting it into three equal pieces and then combining two of those pieces.  I then took both lumps and cut them into three dough balls to make a total of six dough ropes.  I formed the bottom braid and put the smaller one on top and gave it just a little pinch to keep it from falling off.

I then gave the loaf a quick egg white wash, and let them proof under plastic wrap for about 2 hours, or until the loaf just about doubled in size.  I then gave the loaf another quick wash and let it rise until it was double the original size.

The Baking

I preheated the oven to 325 degrees.  I baked the loaves for about 45 minutes, until the internal temperature of the loaves reached 190 degrees.  The crust also turned a nice golden brown.  The curst wa

Results and My Final Thoughts/Notes

I really liked making the Challah.  Even though my shaping skills are not up to the level I would like them to be, I think I will be adding this into the normal rotation of breads.  It serves as a nice break from my "basic" loaves, and gives me a chance to try making "arts-y" bread.

Up Next…

Next week, we'll be tackling Ciabatta on the road!

Comments? Suggestions?

So what do you think? Sound good?  Do you have any butter/milk replacements that I should try?

Holy Missing Post!

Alright.

I admit I've fallen behind on my BBA Challenge post.  I have started the Challah entry, but this week got away from me.  I've been working on Anya's Site, which is still not quite ready, but I promise: Today you will have your Challah post!

Ciabatta is coming along alright...I think ;)

Challah is done

I managed to get the Challah finished yesterday. There wasn't any overnight Fermenting going on, so it came together pretty quickly.

I'll give you a sneak peak at the post: There's half a loaf left!

Nut Brown Update

I took the Nut Brown and transferred it to the 5 gallon Glass carboy on Sunday. It was in there for about 8-9 days before the primary fermentation settled down. While I was transferring the brew, I caught a hint of the hops...and I am happy to report that this will not be a super hoppy beer! Hooray for not using the same hops every single time!

BBA Challenge Round 4: Brioche

The Challenge Bread

This week, we're making Brioche: Rich Man's Style!

BBA Challenge Round 3: Artos: Christopsomos

The Challenge Bread

This week I tackled Artos which is greek celebration bread.  I chose the first variation which is Christopsomos.

Winter Nut Brown Ale!

Along with the BBA challenge this weekend, I also took it upon myself to brew another beer. This time up: Nut Brown Ale.  I went with nut brown to brew something that isn't a stout.  The hops that is called for were very low on the Alpha Acid level, which hopefully means the strong Hop taste that has been overtaking my brews won't be as present.

I'll also get this written up this week, so look out for  more posts!

BBA Challenge Round three is done!

Well I just took Round three out of the oven.  We'll see how it is tomrorow!

Quick thoughts:

• It's a little darker than I would like, but not burnt.


• The smell is amazing.  This is my first time baking that I really had a hard time not "sampling" as soon as it came out.


• Always check your Parchment paper supply BEFORE shaping your loaves.

That's it for now!  I'll get the post and hopefully some pictures up shortly!

The BlackBerry saga

Here's the saga of my former smartphone, the blackberry 9530. It is not a pretty tale and it involves money, reboots, missing apps, and a lot of swearing.

The Issue

It all started when my screen started acting up. My screen would occasionally not recognize a tap or a press.  At first, I thought it was a mistake I made: my hand was too cold, I pushed too quickly, or some other crazy sounding thing.  I would attempt to click on the PodTrapper Icon and get nothing…It didn’t happen frequently enough to warrant sending the unit in for repair, just enough to keep the embers of irritation glowing.  I do seem to have a slight calibration issue.  It is definitely an issue that has cropped up overtime.  While that is an annoyance, the bigger problem is stability.

The App Problem

The one thing I love about the BlackBerry platform over other platforms is the openness. I am not reliant on one company to bless, anoint, or whatever religious analogy you care to use an application.  Granted, there are pros and cons to both styles of thinking.

On the Open-Plus side, I can run whatever I want.  IF want to search for an app that will replace the included apps, such as a replacement web browser, or email application, I can.  As of right now, the only web browser that is available for the iPhone OS is Mobile Safari.  Yes, Opera is working on the Opera Mini browser, but it hasn’t been submitted for approval yet.  On the Non-Open-Plus side, I know the apps that have been approved work.  I haven’t really seen an iPhone/iPod Touch app crash that wasn’t related to the app requiring a data connection, and said connection leaving without leaving a note.  I’ve had a couple of bomb outs on my iPod Touch, but it always brings me right back to the home screen.  I’m getting on an apple rant, so let’s look a the downside of Open-Apps.

On the Open-Minus side, I can run whatever I want.  Since the code isn’t tested by RIM for Operability, You can get some pretty bad apps that crash.  on my BlackBerry, I currently have about 14 apps.  I don’t keep them all running all the time…mostly because the Storm 9530 has a small application memory size.  I am getting a message about once every two days on my storm saying it is out of application memory, and that to remedy this, I should delete some apps.  Seriously?  why is my application memory so small?  I have an 8 gig SD card in there that is 75% free?  Can’t I dedicate some of that to applications?  Granted, I am frustrated by this, but I think this gives way to the penultimate reason…

I am a Cheap Geek

I really am.  I agonized for over a year about getting a smartphone.  I was practically drooling when they announced the Moto Q back in May of 2006.  I eyed that baby for a long time.  It wasn’t until the close of 2007 that I finally took the plunge and picked it up.  It took me another 6 months before I finally got a data plan to really use the thing for more than a glorified calculator.  I held onto that thing until February 2009 when I got the Storm.  I really loved it!  At the time, I could justify the $29.99 a month, as money was a bit more freely flowing with both my wife and I working.  With the birth of my Daughter Anya in December, it really made me rethink my Mobile Priorities.

Don’t get me wrong, I still really like the storm!  SmartPhones in general are still my go-to Gadget dream scenarios.  I can just think of a better thing to spend the money on.  I’m sure I will venture into the SmartPhone arena again, but for now, I’m experimenting to see how I do without 24/7 Internets.

Does that mean I’m completely happy NOT connected 24/7?  No, but I still get all the stuff I want out of my iPod Touch that is on loan.  The question is, when I have to give up the touch…will I get my own?

It has been fun blackberry...

I had a longer post that I just erased like a n00b. I will rewrite. Just not tonight.

I don't know how else to say it blackbery 9530...it's over. We had a good run, but I can't live this lie anyore. You just aren't Meeting my expectations.