Multigrain Sprouted Sourdough Bread

By Melissa On June 24th, 2008

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Its time again for the monthly Bread Baking Day bake-off!  Zorra, the founder of BBD is hosting the one year anniversary edition - and the theme for this exciting occasion is Bread with Sprouts!  For my bread I decided to do a variety of sprouted grains - an equal mix of Hard Red Wheat, Kamut, and Spelt.  I chose these grains because I love the flavor of each, and for ease of sprouting - they are all roughly the same size.
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Bread Baking Day #11 has been posted!

By Melissa On June 6th, 2008

The next BBDay is up! and the theme is sprouted breads! This should really put out some great breads, and now I’ve got to think of what I’ll bake. My only concern is that my oven’s minimum baking temperature is 175F, and I think for sprouting you need around 110-130F. Any suggestions?

Bread Baking Day #11 - one year anniversary: Bread with sprouts

Bread Baking Day #10 Roundup!

By Melissa On June 4th, 2008

It is my pleasure to present to you the fine collection of Breakfast Breads baked up for this month’s BBD challenge. We had 53 54 55 submissions from 16 different countries - quite a variety of breakfast goodies!

Before I showcase all that breakfast is made of, I’d like to thank Zorra for founding this inspiring event and to let you all know to head over to her blog to get the theme of the one year BreadBakingDay anniversary edition!

Also, a big thank you to everyone that participated in this event - it was honor to not only host BBD for its 10th installment, but to get to (virtually) meet each and every one of you - I think that this diversity is what the essence of food blogging is all about - From sisters in Saudi Arabia, to California (our most popular state this month), people coming together from all parts of the world to share a common passion is so incredible - thank you for letting me be a part of it! And I’d like to say a special thank you to Antonella; she doesn’t have a blog but was so eager to still participate.

And the fun begins!
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Cinnamon Rolls

By Melissa On June 1st, 2008

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Could life be any better than starting your day with some warm gooey cinnamon rolls? I was fortunate enough to be the lucky host of this month’s edition of Bread Baking Day and I was thrilled to hold that title. This is the 10th edition, and the theme is Breakfast Breads! I had been long wanting to make a batch of cinnamon rolls, and when one of docs I work with made the formal request, I thought this would be the perfect “bread” for my entry!
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Headin’ to the opera! Or, well, eating one :)

By Melissa On May 28th, 2008

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I was terrified when I saw this recipe. It was **6** pages long!! I’m still terrified of this recipe! I loooove baking, but I don’t care for recipes that carry this many steps - I mean, that’s THAT many DIFFERENT places for my baking-red-thumb to go nuts. I think I still need more practice with this recipe! I could’ve had more practice with this recipe if I hadn’t procrastinated. I really was frightened! All in all it came out well. (please forgive the awful quality of my pictures!!! I thought I had white balanced well enough, but the dim lighting masked the appropriate WB).
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TWD - Florida Pie

By Melissa On May 13th, 2008

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Because I live for key lime pie, I had marked this recipe when I first bought this book. I was *so* glad that it had finally come up in the rotation! Dianne of Diannes Dishes chose our recipe and I had plans to starting baking as soon as I saw it posted. Of course the weekend came (and went) and that’s why I’m a total slacker posting it now, almost midnight on the day of submission!! Not to mention that I cheated some - I bought a pre-made crust. Go on, send me the mean remarks - I can take it. Its the first time I’ve done that in about 6 years. I have a good excuse! I’m taking a cake-decorating class, and I’m not getting home until almost 10:30pm…
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BreadBakingDay #10 - Breakfast Breads!

By Melissa On May 6th, 2008

There is certainly no better way to break the fast than to start the day off with some fabulous fresh baked bread! Lucky for us, this bread takes on so many forms at breakfast time! Bagels, English muffins, cinnamon rolls, sticky buns, french toast, doughnuts, waffles, pancakes, sweet breads, and plain ol’ toast; I’m out of breath already, and there’s so many more…

It is my pleasure to present to you the theme of this month’s BreadBakingDay - Breakfast Breads! Because the options are truly endless, I’m going to only put one restriction on this - it must have a leavening agent of some kind. Quick breads are just as fabulous as yeasted breads for this
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Welcome to my new home!

By Melissa On May 1st, 2008

Well, not mine, really, but my blog’s! So glad you could visit! The amazing Jess at Delicious Design Studio did a whirlwind of a job and has me totally tickled with this new site!  She was so incredible and easy to work with; I hands-down recommend her to anyone.  Thanks for everything, Jess :)

The former site, if you had previously visited, was here but I wanted something that didn’t sound so “muffin”ish. I was also aiming for something that was a bit more sophisticated, while incorporating all aspects of baking, since I do a great deal of breads, and not just sweets.  I’m going to move some of my favorite posts from the last site over to this one for easy reference.  Also, the old blog will auto-direct here, so don’t do a double take if you are confused with how you may have arrived  :)

My Lovely High Extraction Miche

By Melissa On April 22nd, 2008

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I’ve been so eager to try this bread, and I’m so glad I finally did! The reason I had put it off for so long is that the high extraction do-it-yourself-part had intimidated me. I don’t know why - it ended up being so easy to do, and so worth this 4 extra minutes that it took.

This bread was gargantuan! But so incredible. It was probably 14″ across, and about 8″ or 9″ tall. This would be my first jumbo-sized loaf, and it really could feed an army. Well, a small army. Maybe a small baseball team. Anyway. I have an electric mill and normally mill my own wheat, spelt, kamut, etc for my whole grain breads. I wasn’t sure that I would be able to sift anything out of it, since the entire wheat berry is milled at the same grind.
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Bread Baking Day #9 - Oats!

By Melissa On April 22nd, 2008

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This month’s Bread Baking Day theme was simple - the bread must include oats. Astrid of Paulchen’s Food Blog was our lovely host this month, and I thought there are so many options that I was paralyzed by indecision for the first 3 weeks that this challenge was posted. I decided that I wanted to incorporate fruit, and I was in the mood for something quick, specifically a quickbread! I decided to do a variation of the Peach Oatmeal Bread in King Arthur’s Whole Grain Baking book. I thought that peaches would be super appropriate since I reside in the official peach state. :)

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