Sunday, January 4, 2015

A New Year of Good Breads

We're back! C&C Artisan Breads spent the holidays in Pittsburgh, where (oddly) the temperatures weren't all that much colder than they were here in Redlands. No snow back east either, so the anticipated "white Christmas" wasn't to be. Alas.

While we were in Pittsburgh, we took some time to introduce folks to the easy and fun work of making a simple loaf of artisan hearth bread. We also shared a bit of the C&C starter with people so they could jump right into baking naturally leavened breads. This is not necessary...you can create your own starter with flour and water, but it takes a couple of weeks so we brought some starter along to kick things off.

Every year at Thanksgiving my siblings draw names from a hat for the Christmas gift exchange. This year, my brother Matt drew my name, and he got me pretty good. When I unwrapped my gift from him, I assumed it was a joke, since it weighed a ton. Turned out it was (and wasn't) a joke. He got me this behemoth of an iron roaster from Cabela's.  I was pretty excited, but thought it might have been better if he'd had it shipped to Redlands. Ha! I ended up baking a giant loaf of deli rye to go with the Christmas ham. It was one of the finest loaves of bread I've ever baked.

Your baker with a 2 kg loaf of deli rye.
Luckily, we had flown Southwest, so we were able to just check the roaster as one of our checked bags at no added expense. Definitely looking forward to using the roaster for special occasion loaves. It worked really well.

Here's the sliced loaf. The crumb was really nice, and it went pretty fast.

Sliced monster rye.
2014 was a great year! Here's a bit of a "best of" set of photos of last year's breads. We're hoping that 2015 is as good a year as last, with even better versions of our current repertoire and some new breads that will keep the bread share folks on their toes. Happy new year!

Pane al Cioccolato
Seeded Ancient Grain Sourdough
Roasted Potato Fendu
Whole Wheat Country Loaf
Jewish Deli Rye
Spicy Cheese Crackers


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