Lots of emails also this weekend about pain à l’ancienne, mostly from people without a mixer (and/or the other pieces of gear I referenced) who still want to make the bread. The answer is you don’t absolutely have to have all that stuff, though if you don’t have a mixer you’ll need to do some […]
READ ONSTILL getting emails on the topic of crème fraîche, which is fine…but where were all you fermented dairy fanatics when I was getting complaints back in the fall of ’07? Most of the requests are for either a) an exact recipe or b) tips on how to make it. So in the interests of putting […]
READ ONAnd what a terrific trip it was, too. Thanks mucho to Bob (a.k.a. Mexico Bob) and his wife, Gina, as well as Cristina from Mexico Cooks, both of whom went WAY out of their way to see that a niño perdido in Mexico not only felt welcome, but had a great time. Who says the […]
READ ONI’m in Mexico. Yep, Morelia, about three hours south of Mexico City. I’m here on top secret baking business. Actually no, that’s not true. I’m here checking the lay of the land as the Pastry clan is supposed to move down here for a month or so this summer. I have to say, this place […]
READ ONIt can’t be that hard, can it? I mean, they’re unicellular organisms. What’s funny to me is how few people have ever thought to do it until recently. One of the results is pain à l’ancienne, though as I said a couple of days ago, Peter Reinhart has since expanded on the technique to create […]
READ ONSo what can this bread teach us about ovens and heat? How does bread baked in a regular oven get such a nice, open crumb? First of all there’s the wetness of the dough, which means more steam and more expansion. However you need heat penetration to create that steam, and more than that rapid […]
READ ONI’m a perfectionist about a lot of things, but pain à l’ancienne isn’t one of them. I take the term “rustic” seriously here, so the more oddly-shaped, bulbous and goofy these things turn out, the better. I don’t even care if my dough portions are the same weight…is that gettin’ nutty or what? This bread […]
READ ONPerhaps a couple of you wondered that looking at yesterday’s oven photos. In fact it was my version of Peter Reinhart’s pain à l’ancienne. There’s a lot of interest in this bread in the baking community. Or should I say there has been, ever since he first published the recipe eight years ago in his […]
READ ONThere is another advantage to adding heavy pizza stones, or even actual bricks, to your home oven that I didn’t mention yesterday. That is consistency of heat. Most of us assume that when we heat up our home ovens they stay consistently and uniformly hot. This is not the case. In fact if you could […]
READ ON…a new friend at Underbelly wrote in with this hilarious comment on all the grief I’ve been getting: As a fellow ridicule-worthy food elist, I share your scorn of merely stupid food elitists. Thanks for the great blog. Not normally Joe Pastry style, but I’ve been under a lot of pressure lately.
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