Isabelle Prescott

Its incredible how many seeds stayed on you loaf. Mine never cling that tenaciously. Just dump the "fallen angels" onto the butter you've spread onto that delicious slice and eat away... As to crust. Not being a purist I just spray my loaves with water from a spray bottle after I've slashed them and immediately slide them onto the heated pizza stone and bake at 450 degrees for 10 minutes. Then open the oven and spritz them again with the spray bottle, turn down the temp to 425 and bake for another 20 minutes. Take a look and decide whether to add another 5-10 minutes or not to the baking. All depends on how big the loaf is and how I've shaped it. I gave up on the water in a pan to create steam and nearly destroyed the bottom of the oven of my Viking range throwing ice cubes in as some people suggested. Bake all the bread I consume from a starter that began over 5 years ago and is still going strong.

You'e making me hungrier than I already am. I have started making my own kefir and wonder if anyone in this forum has made bread with kefir?

Beautiful picture!!! I'm impressed with it and the follwing is not meant in any way as a criticism of you or anyone else posting on this bread forum. I have been wondering for a while now. How did it come to be so important to have lots of air space and little actual bread when we bake at home? Is there nutrition in the air spaces? Or are we breadmakers trying to impress other bakers with our knowledge of how our bread should look? In my everyday, humdrum life I need a certain amount of actual food to chew on and if I don't get this "chewing" in a piece of toast or sandwich I find myself wanting to eat stuff like crunchy, salty snacks. My home made sourdough bread can look all holey if I so choose to make it that way but when I made a sandwich I like a little more substance. This is a serious question for me. Am I the only who feels this way? I appreciate all comments. pro or con. Not trying to be a smart-a** here! Thanks for all replies. I love eGullet in all its aspects.

Thank you lochaven. Just tryin' to keep breathing and enjoy living. You would be one hard to keep up with. Congrats.

My method is an alternative to society donors or using a bannoten. I say "Hurrah!" for diversity. I'm 78 years old, have 2 part time jobs, work out at the gym 3 days a week, have a boyfriend, sail my 26' sailboat regularly, take care of my garden, cook almost all my own meals, rarely watch TV and am going to take a class on cheese-making next week. I will be making an apron tomorrow in my sewing machine. I also volunteer selling at the symphony shop every other week. I don't have a workshop in my garage to make a wooden device when a bread basket works fine for me. In-between times I do the family thing... (9 grandkids).

Too complicated for me! I just take an oblong wicker bread basket that one serves bread in at the table and line it with a linen dish towel. I have 2 baskets and 2 linen towels as I make at least 2 loaves each time I bake. Sometimes I make 3 loaves so I take a round bowl lined with a linen dish towel and make the third loaf round. I have no problem gently rolling the raised dough onto my cornmeal covered pizza peel where I slash the dough before gently sliding it onto the pizza stone in my oven. Works every time.

I dried the sourdough starter by spreading a couple of tablespoons on a piece of waxed paper and let it dry overnight. I put it in an envelope and when Amanda got back to OZ she mixed it in with equal amounts of water and flour and let it bubble away. I've had this starter for 4 or 5 years. I started it with grapes, flour and bottled water as per the La Brea Bakery method and been using it ever since.

I finally got to meet my internet friend, Amanda, in person. She lives in Australia and we originally "met" on a recipe forum many years ago. While she was in the US I wanted to share my sourdough starter with her. I knew she wouldn't be able to take it in liquid form on the plane so I dried some and put it in an envelope for her. She reconstituted it when she got back to Adelaide and made some beautiful loaves of sourdough bread. She writes a food blog: http://www.lambsearsandhoney.com/ There are pictures of her sourdough loaves made with my starter in the blog if you want to see them. They look better than mine... but its fun to know that something I created in my kitchen is now feeding Amanda's family in Australia.

There are many gluten free lava cake recipes on the internet.

I barely add any flour to the towel. I use linen towels but have also used 100 percent cotton and they never stick to the bread.

Try baking without slashing and see what happens.

I don't bake gluten-free but googled gluten-free sourdough and found this site. http://www.gfdoctorrecipes.com/recipes/gluten-free-sourdough-bread-starter-recipe-if-you-dare.html Hope it helps.

If you check Food.com, there is a recipe for what you want that wa submitted by 1 of their members. Uses whole wheat flour. http://www.food.com/recipe/thin-sandwich-buns-400468

I discovered the same thing when my oven went out on my Viking range several months ago. I did sourdough on a pizza stone elevated by a cake pan in my grill and the loaves came out perfectly baked. Instead of steaming, I paint water on the loaves before putting in the oven, then after 10 minutes, paint them again. It works as well as steaming. So if you are ever caught with no power or gas you can always have fresh baked bread in your grill.

By searching Google re Claus Meyers, I found this video on shaping wet dough. http://www.youtube.com/user/Meyersmad#p/a/u/0/cIIjV6s-0cA Did you boyfriend's mother have dough that looked similar to this or was it wetter?

To make a lighter starter you need to add white flour to a small portion of you regular rye starter. I would put 1/4 cup of the rye starter in a jar. Then mix together 1 cup of purified water and 1 cup of white flour. Add this mixture to the 1/4 cup of rye starter and let it sit at room temperature until its nice and bubbly and has increased in volume. I can't estimate how long that will take as I don't know how strong your rye starter is. You will end up with 2 starters, one for rye bread and the other to make pizza dough, white or wheat bread, etc. It might help to give it a name since it will be Charlotte's offspring.

My starter has the consistancy of pancake batter. I feed it with 1 cup of flour mixed into 1 cup of bottled water. Since I bake bread at least once a week, I take out 1 cup of the starter as the leaveneing for my bread and replace it with the flour/water mixture. I created my original batch of starter using the Nancy Silverton of La Brea Bakery method which consists of flour, water and organic grapes. It took at least 3-4 weeks for it to be strong enough to be used to bake bread. (I fed it about once every 5 days during that time.) I tried sooner and each time the loaves didn't rise enough. I was getting discouraged but persistance paid off. I have been baking with this starter for about 3 or 4 years, maybe longer. There are pictures of some of my breads on my blog. Some are sourdough and some are other types of bread.

How many days did you let the starter sit before trying to use it to make bread? Did it get bubbly and did you feed it regularly before trying to use a portion of it to make your dough? If you put the starter an the oven that was hot enough to melt plastic it almost certainly killed any chance of it rising. I've been baking sourdough bread for many years. Getting the starter too hot will kill it, just at getting yeast too hot will kill it. I've never been able to recover a dough that won't rise properly for whatever reason and I've tried mightly. It will stay like a brick when you bake it even after 3 or 4 days of trying to get it to rise. Best thing is to throw it out and begin anew. Don't be discouraged. Once you've made a successful loaf of sourdough, you won't believe how easy it is. Good luck.

Yes, you should have turned it down.

I have this Avanti model (see website below) which has 2 electric burners on top and a convection oven with rotisserie big enough for one chicken. Not sure how much bigger the interior is than a large toaster oven. I have baked one loaf of bread in it at a time. My BF used to live in a small apartment with no stove in the kitchen so we bought this and I cooked gourmet meals with it. Now I sometimes use it on my 26 ft. boat when we are in a slip and have access to shore electricity. We purchased it at Fry's but I'm not sure they still carry it. It can be ordered directly from Avanti. http://www.avantiproducts.com/products/id/448

there' a delicious sounding recipe here: http://www.latartinegourmande.com/2008/10/09/chocolate-apple-clafoutis-raspberry/

Many years ago I used the Pillsbury Hot Roll Mix and kept a box in my pantry for rolls, pizza, etc. Always had good luck with it. Now I bake sourdough and every other kind of bread and rolls from scratch. I can buy 25 lbs. of flour for around eight dollars. Makes a whole lot of bread for little cost. Have my sourdough starter, flour, water and salt... and I'm in business.

I've been baking breads, rolls, biscuits for many years. You certainly can substitute flours. Just go for it and see how the product turns out. I have problems with rancid and buggy whole grain flours also. You can buy smaller amounts in places like Henry's. They carry all sorts in bins and you scoop out the amount you want and bag it yourself. That is how I buy my semolina, rye, whole wheat, cous-cous, etc. I recently bought some plastic containers with tight fitting lids at Smart and Final for storing these.

Those bagels look delicious. I want one now with my cup of coffee. I've made bagels before but not from that recipe. What I'm looking for now is a good rye bread recipe. I made some this week with a recipe that calls for beer instead of water for the liquid. The bread is OK but not great.

Ah, if only I had a fork in hand... I'd be tasting that immediately. My desire is to lick the picture on my computer screen!!!!!!!!