Tartine

I started a new tab on my blog; "my discovery of ...."

When I'm not baking for Bread Baking Day or with the Bread Baking Babes as a Buddy or baking a bread of my growing list of "soon to bake breads", I bake Chad Robertson's Tartine Country Bread.

Tartine has somethings I like in Artisan bread; good looks, nice smell and the taste of sourdough. I like the Tartine breads I've baked so far. There are many good recipes I can bake every day, but for now I choose Tartine. At the tab "my discovery of ...." I will write my experiences baking this bread. Here you also find the recipe and steps to bake this bread. 

Today I baked these:

And this is how it tasted: crispy crust and moistly soft. In one word: Delicious, the best tasting bread made by me. 

Roasted Pumpkin Sourdough Bread

 

Every week on Tuesday there is a local market in a small village nearby. People from the hill tribes sell their products. It’s nice to see all hill tribe people in their traditional cloths doing their weekly shopping. They don't wear it for tourists, but it’s their daily outfit. We also see the  longneck women at the market. Most of the time, we are the only foreigners at this market. When we first came to this market we were the tourist attraction for them to look at. But, after a while we are all the same; visitors to the local market looking for something good and for a good price. 

Last week we found a nice orange potimarron pumpkin. I looked at the recipe of Roasted Potato Bread made by Susan of Wild Yeast so many times. I thought I could try this recipe with roasted pumpkin. Today I finally did it. 

Stromboli with Pesto and Sundried Tomatoes

We were all invited to bake with the Bread Baking Babes. This month, we all; the Babes and the Buddies bake Stromboli.


Stromboli is a small island in the Tyrrhenian Sea, off the north coast of Sicily, containing one of the three active volcanoes in Italy. And, looking at the pictures I found the name of Stromboli made sense. All the loaves looked like cheese erupting volcanoes.

I looked at the recipe Elle had put on her blog and soon discovered I missed most ingredients for the filling. We had no smoked Swiss cheese, no prosciutto, no pepperoni and no fresh rosemary. We did have garlic, Thai basil leaves, salt and pepper.

We thought about a Thai Stromboli, but we have delicious “Girlichef” slow roasted tomatoes with garlic and onion in the refrigerator and I could make pesto with Thai ingredients and I could make a little bit of soft goat cheese.  I found the perfect Stromboli with my ingredients at the blog of Kitchenis. And off I went to the kitchen.

That night we would have Stromboli in stead of a nice pizza.

Goat Cheese Bread

This month the theme of Bread Baking Day #40 is bread with curd.

We live in Thailand for nearly five years and we love it. The only food we miss is artisan bread (taken care of) and cheese (still working on). Dutch people are lucky with their great variety of cheeses. And what they don’t have, they can buy nearby. A year ago we started to make our own cheese. It is difficult! I can tell about the hygiene, the weather, the cooling conditions, the press, the salt, the ripening, and…. But, I don't.

When I read the announcement of Zorra for this months theme I thought; ‘I know a little bit about making curd. I can make soft goat cheese and it’s deliciously easy. But, how will it taste in bread?’ Today we will know. 

Il Pane di Matera

Today I wanted to make something special. I found huge funny looking bread; Il Pane di Matera. Tim, the breadbakingbassplayer, had baked it and it looked great.

Luckily he has a link with a video on how to shape this loaf. It's tough to explain, I agree. When I started it was sticky dough; 71% hydration. I needed wet hands to touch it. Stretching and folding the dough gives it strength, but for this bread you just stretch and fold one time. I wanted to do more folds, but kept to the instructions. It worked, the dough was still sticky, but workable. I watched the video, I couldn’t have shaped my loaf without it. 

Pain au Levain

Pain au Levain with more Rye

Today is my own Bread Baking Day.

For BBD#39 of April 2011 we were asked to bake Salt rising bread. I tried a few times to get the starter going, but beside from a bad smell nothing happened. But, luckily some others succeeded.

Almost every week I bake bread, but April was a difficult month. The weather changed so much this month it looked like rainy season had started 3 months early. “Normally” during April it is the hottest month of Thailand. The Thai New Year, Songkran, is held in April. During these 3 days everybody throws water at each other. This is happy event because it is so hot, you enjoy this cool water. But because of the rainy weather even the children threw less water. But, what ever happens, we all enjoyed Songkran.

Today it’s 31˚C in my kitchen en I’m loving it. No rain today, blue sky and sunny. I found beautiful loaves made by Natashya of Living in the Kitchen with Puppies. I made one big loaf and found the photos on how to make Epi at Fig Jam and Lime Cordial. The next day I baked another Pain au Levain, but with more rye. It looks and taste great!

The other side also looks great

This is a great recipe, you really should try this. Because of the levain you get bread that taste like French bread, a lot of flavor, a thick crust and soft and moist crumb. We love it.

Epi, fun to make and great to eat

Pan Francese

This week we visited friends who have a monkey sanctuary. This couple, she’s Australian and he’s Japanese, take care of a lot of Macaque monkeys with the help of their 3 adopted Thai Lahu sons. It’s a lot of work and the monkeys eat a lot of fruit. So, when our papaya-trees are loaded with fruit, we bring them as much as we can.

Our friends like to eat artisan bread. When they heard about our breads, they loved to try and bake them too. I gave them recipes. I wanted to give them a recipe for baguette. But, making baguette takes a lot of time, so I picked the best one I had tried before. Recently they told us how happy they were with the baguettes they made.
I was surprised they had really made it, because it is 5 pages of instruction and a lot of work. But, I was also happy they liked it. I told them I would look for more recipes on baguettes. But, before I can give a recipe to them, I have to try it for myself. Then I can say if this one is more delicious then the one “Parisian people eat daily”.