Monthly Archives: January 2012

Saffron Pear Almond Cake : Short & Sweet

I don’t have a lot of time to get this written up tonight so this is a speed post, half an hour flat out. I wasn’t going to bake this weekend but I found myself drawn into cake making, maybe by Mitchdafish’s delectable version of this cake here.  I scoured the garage for tinned peaches and came up with September’s home bottled pears and a tin of cherries. I checked with the others on Twitter what the drained weight of the peaches in the recipe should be, a great advantage of baking with other people even at the distance of the internet is that you can ask away and someone will say something helpful. Thinking about it afterwards, you just use what you have as the fruit goes on the top of the cake and doesn’t make a difference to the texture of the cake itself, providing you drain it, I am sure fifty grams more or less of fruit topping wouldn’t matter much.

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Mellow Bakers comes to the end of Bread

The final breads for Mellow Bakers from ‘Bread’ by Jeffrey Hamelman are:

  1. the Five Grain Levain (P 174)
  2. the Two Semolina breads (these use that very fine rimacinata or durum wheat flour that is quite hard to find in the UK)  (P 135 and P 137)
  3. The Roasted Garlic Levain on Page 183

and then the Mellow Bakers will have baked their way through the entire oeuvre. Well, some brilliant bakers have done it, I didn’t quite manage it, but so it goes. I’m going to have a serious crack at getting these done though as they all look like great recipes.

The pics at the top are nothing to do with these breads as I haven’t made them yet but what is a bread post without pictures?

So if you’re wondering what to bake this month, we’d love you to join in with this final set of breads, dig out some garlic from your stores and make roast garlic yumminess, you can use it in other dishes too,  and post about it on your blog, or tweet a photo, or send me a link or post about it here on the Mellow Bakers forum. It’s never too late to be Mellow about your baking.

Due to the old banner being a different size to the new one it has vanished from the Mellow Bakers Pages which is sad but here it is for those of you who haven’t seen it.

Short & Sweet : Rye Crispbreads and Cider Squash Farls

Sourdough Rye crisp breads – extra thin and snappy with it! The Holy Grail for me at least of rye crackers is that they should snap and be brittle, something like a potato crisp (chip in US English) rather than something you have to gnaw your way through. Stale crisp breads usually respond well to a reheat in the oven, but if they are too thick and hard then they are no fun at all.

Like just about everything in the wonderful world of bread, tastes vary and this is what makes it all the more worthwhile making your own and finding your way to the breads you want to eat yourself.  Continue reading →