Mamaliga

Day One - sponge, starter feeding and grains

For those of you lucky dogs and ducks that inherited a piece of my multi-million dollar sourdough starter, here is the first blog post in the series discussing how to actually bake a sourdough bread that will gain back your spouse’s respect, as your kids and friends would bow in front of you and address you as “Your Royal Majesty”. This series is a remastered version of the original Sourdough Chronicles I wrote a while ago.

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Popularity: 2% [?]

Kaiser Roll Sandwich

Look, this is not the healthiest breads of all, but sure makes a killer sandwich. Also thought it was time to dust off my Bread Baker’s Apprentice book and take on a new bread baking challenge. Summer is slowly tapering off with scattered bearable temperatures when I can finally heat up my oven to 425 without roasting everyone in the house. Who would have thought that this Kaiser roll bread would bring flashbacks of my childhood in Romania! I remember risking being late at our chemistry class (no one cared of) only to run and buy a couple of these Kaiser rolls being sold at our corner bakery. I am sure back then they called these something other than Kaiser Rolls, since little rolls baked in honor of Franz Joseph I of Austria would have gone against the grains of communism. Maybe they called them Lenin Rolls? Don’t remember…

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Popularity: 5% [?]

Since it started, I’ve been wanting to spin off my participation in Nicole’s Bread Baker’s Apprentice Challenge – an ambitious project to bake myself through Peter Reinhart’s book with the same name. Finally, I have my hands full of sticky dough up to my elbows. This week’s challenge is Ciabatta Bread, a North-Western (Liguria) Italian invention that literally means carpet slipper because of its typical shape that resembles it.

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Popularity: 23% [?]