clb

I'm very sorry, Lippy, and am thinking of you both.

clb

Exciting, isn't it Cristina?  We moved into an over 100 year old house at the end of April and just began the work on the floors, walls, exterior, and roof in the past two weeks.  The bathrooms will probably be the last project we tackle...  But seeing the new floors emerging in each room has been really great.

I'm sure your landlord and the workers will have checked it out but just to be sure... with a hundred year old house, I don't know what kind of construction they were using in Guadalajara at that time but for us in Victorian England the floorboards aren't condusive to tiles if the floor is not on the ground floor.  The houses shift a bit here in London and between the weight of the tiles and moving floorboards, you end up with cracking of the tiles and stress to the floorboards underneath.

I know because I asked our builders about it.  I wanted tiling on the second floor bathroom but its not to be.

Don't you just put some sturdy hardboard down first, Aki?  We've got tiles in the first (=US second) floor bathroom of our Victorian house.  They've been happily there for about 10 years now, with no sign of cracking.  Same goes for most of our neighbours.

A full summary I think is beyond me: the article's 5 1/2 pages long and densely written.  But I can relay a few points.  The books reviewed are Beranbaum's Bread Bible, Hamelman's Bread, Daniel Leader's Bread Alone, Mayle and Auzet's Confessions of a French Baker, Ortiz's The Village Baker, Reinhart's Bread Baker's Apprentice and Silverton's Breads from La Brea.  

He talks about the difficulties the authors have with balancing the easy-as-pie recipe approach with the reality that making great hearth bread is a very complicated affair.  His central point is that much of the information relayed in the books is simply wrong: Ortiz believes fava-bean flour to be a good thing rather than a flour improver "dreaded by every consicientious French baker for its deleterious effects upon taste and texture"; Leader advises adding commercial yeast to a sourdough "in the entirely false belief that it will help to "collect wild yeasts from the air.""; none of the authors understand that using higher protein "bread" flours makes breads difficult to knead by hand and produce "an unpleasantly chewy crumb and a crust that tends to soften and become rubbery" (he advises using King Arthur AP instead).

MacGuire distinguishes between the effects of wild yeasts and lactic bacteria, which I found quite illuminating.  He says the "wild yeasts produce milder flavors and a lighter, more delicate loaf, while lactic bacteria produce tanginess and a denser, chewier texture" and talks about how to encourage each.  There's stuff on using rye too.

He finds Beranbaum's "dizzying mental calisthenics" ludicrous and worries about the competence of Reinhart, given the evidence of the photographs in his book.

He says that only Leader properly explains the basic temperature formula used by almost every artisan baker but really only recommends Hamelman's book, which he admits is written by a good friend: "The facts and figures are all there, with nothing glossed over, and all is delivered with the voice and personality of a great baker and teacher.  His enthusiasm is such that other readers may feel convinced, as I do, that few pursuits are more delightful than an afternoon of baking."

clb

Robert, did you see James MacGuire's review of bread baking books for the amateur in the new Art of Eating?  It's a very interesting piece and I found, as I read it, that I was thinking of you and wondering what you would make of it.

And thank you for that analysis of slashing the loaf above.  Very useful.

clb

Dug out my black clay pot,and re-seasoned it.

How?  I must admit that it had never occurred to me that a clay pot might need seasoning.

clb