All grains contain peptides that mimic morphine or endogenous opioid substances. This is where I deal with my latest loaf craving. Get your bread-based exorphin fix here.

Index to this Site

This index may not be entirely up to date, I only update it when I feel like it.

The first blog of this site was about exorphins.  That set me on my quest.

The quickest way to find a blog entry is to click on any picture of the crumb gallery for 2010, the crumb gallery for 2011, or the crumb gallery for 2012.  But that assumes you can tell from a tiny picture what you are looking at.  The search engine can be hit-or-miss sometimes.  And I only update the crumb gallery every so often, it may not be up-to-date.

I am hoping to blog on some of the things I learn about various grains as I read more and work more with them - I don't know that I'll be able to entirely reverse-engineer our digestion of grains, but I would like to know more about the health issues of grain in the human diet. 


Rants
Sometimes I rant or gab about strange things.
Dangerous
I've made a lot of really stupid mistakes in baking, and a few of them are kind of fun to look back on, now that I know I survived.  Here is a short list:
Stupid

I have also made a lot of ugly loaves, or awful tasting loaves.  Here was my top ten bread failures list for 2010.  There is also the WTF loaf.

Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads
One of the excuses for starting this blog is that I have been working my way through Peter Reinhart's book 'Whole Grain Breads'. But I get distracted easily, and I've set no time limit for accomplishing the goal of making every single recipe in the book.  I learn a lot each time I make these loaves, but frankly, I haven't made one that I really like yet.  Probably the best one so far was the second Multigrain Struan I made.

I have put together a separate index page of the breads I have made from Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads, with a few pictures.

    Lahey's My Breads
    I have also been playing with Jim Lahey's book, 'my breads'.  I won't be making every recipe in this book, but the recipes I have tried and used as a foundation for experimentation have been a lot of fun.  Here are some of the breads I have made from Lahey's book (I also use his technique for other recipes I find, and I find it always gives great results; the only thing is, his recipes use mostly bread flour, not whole grain flours, and that is not my interest):
    Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book
    Another Recipe book that is endlessly challenging and has a ton of recipes that I seem to be trialing more and more is "The Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book: A Guide to Whole Grain Breadmaking".  This is probably the book I should be working through, rather than Reinhart's.  It is a more generalized book, with many different techniques.  Reinhart's is one technique, endlessly repeated in various recipes.  For now, though, I am dipping into this book to bake breads that grab my attention.


    Mildred Orton's Whole Grains Cookbook
    This little book is highly recommended.  Succinct honest recipes, no bloat, these recipes work.  Every recipe I try, I am delighted.  I find myself baking my way through the entire book.  Probably I'll finish this book before I finish Reinhart's!
    Tartine Bread Cookbook
    Late in the game, I broke down and bought this book, despite my early reservations, and I have never looked back.  Although there are very few whole grain breads in this book, the way it uses wild yeast cultures is inspired, and the author Chad Robertson takes the guesswork out of making truly great bread.  This book is highly recommended, not just for the bread recipes, but for the pictures by Eric Wolfinger, which sold the book for me.  Because I am more interested in whole grains, I won't be making all the breads in this book, but the basic recipes have been the foundation for a lot of experimentation, and any Tartine-style bread is a joy to make.  I won't list my own experiments here, just the official recipes (except of course, the Integral, which Robertson discusses, even if he doesn't give the recipe)

    Pizza
    I probably will also experiment with pizza dough a little.  Lahey also has recipes for that; but so do others.  I sort of lost interest in pizza once I felt I had 'perfected' the barbecue version, but some anonymous commenter suggested I should post more of my pizzas.  Maybe, we'll see.

    What is an Everyday Bread?
    I make a lot of Everyday Breads, which are usually just fast and familiar and/or fun and experimental.  They may be based on recipes from the people who brought us 'Artisan Breads in 5 Minutes a Day' and 'Healthy Breads in 5 Minutes a Day', or some other book I have, or they may be just some recipe or idea that my attention was drawn to.  To me, they all seem to be converging on something, aiming toward something convenient and tasty and healthy and utilitarian:
    1.  Using Sourdough Discards in 5min/day Health Bread Master Recipe
    2.  5min/day Healthy Bread Master Recipe, with a bit of sourdough starter
    3.  An experiment combining methods of 5min/day and Reinhart's Firm Starter
    4.  A Pinwheel Detox Bread of my own invention
    5.  Ojakangas' 100% Rye Bread with Boiled Rye Kernels
    6.  Wecken, A German Breakfast Bun
    7. 100% Whole Wheat experiment with Boiled Whole Wheat
    8. Fastest Buns in the World
    9. A German Farmer's Hearth Bread
    10. A German No-Knead Bread
    11. Schnelles Brotrezept - German Quick Bread Recipe
    12. 5-minuten-Brot - a German 5 minute bread recipe, and experiment 
    13. Supposedly a Berliner Schrippen 
    14. Everyday Bread: An Experimental Whole Wheat Loaf using Lahey's methods
    15. Helmut's Deutsche Hefe Brötchen, scaled to 2 buns
    16. Firtig's Northern Lakes Wild Rice Rye Bread
    17. Three Rye Breads
    18. A Bauernbrot for Mother's Day  
    19. Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day Master Recipe (Fail)
    20. Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day Master Recipe (Better)
    21. Leah's Memere's Red River Cereal Bread Scaled to One Loaf
    22. Another 100% Rye Based on Lahey's Methods
    23. Grape Bread (a raisin loaf using grape juice, using Lahey's Carrot Bread recipe)
    24. Bradley Benn's Near Beer Bread From Healthy Bread in 5 Min a Day
    25. Weakling Rye Bread: a fail of Wolter & Teubner's Strong Rye
    26. Bradley Benn's Near Beer Bread from HBin5, part 2
    27. Whole Grain Rye Bread from Healthy Bread in 5 Min a Day
    28. Whole Grain Rye Bread from Healthy Bread in 5 Min a Day, Part 2
    29. 100% Whole Wheat and Flaxseed Bread from Healthy Bread in 5 Min a Day 
    30. Sourdough Discard Bread and Sourdough No Discard Bread
    31. Sourdough Breads from Reinhart's 'The Bread Baker's Apprentice"
    32. Yeasted Pagnotta: a failed attempt to use up some sourdough starter
    33. Whole Wheat Yeasted Pagnotta
    34. Fridge-retarded whole wheat yeasted pagnotta 
    35. Reinhart's Basic Sourdough Recipe, from Bread Baker's Apprentice (using Motherstarter) 
    36. Reinhart's Basic Sourdough Recipe, from Bread Baker's Apprentice (using elaborated Rye Motherstarter) 
    37. Reinhart's Basic Sourdough Recipe, from Bread Baker's Apprentice (using elaborated Whole Wheat Motherstarter)
    38. Olive loaf made with Lahey methods but using sourdough motherstarter and multigrain flour.
    39. HBin5 Brioche for burger buns
    40. More Sourdough Experiments: 8 different loaves, 6 made with Detmolder Builds 
    41. Brioche Lemon Zest Ring with Wild Raspberries for Canada Day
    42. Fastest Buns in the World, Revisited  
    43. Falsche Hase Cubed, a nutloaf
    44. Refreshing Error Bread Failure, a barbecued loaf gone wrong
    45. James Beard's Cracked Wheat Bread
    46. Sourdough Discard Crumpets
    47. A Simpler Meteil, based on Bernard Clayton's Meteil from 'The Breads of France'
    48. German No-Knead Bread Revisited, Rye with Whole Wheat Flour
    49. A boiled whole grains loaf
    50. Camp Bread in a Dutch Oven - my first attempt
    51. Camp Bread in a Dutch Oven -  a straight multigrain
    52. Camp Bread in a Dutch Oven - Evan's Trail Mix Bread
    53. Camp Bread in a Dutch Oven - A Sourdough Discard Bread
    54. Camp Bread in a Dutch Oven -  Paul's Loaf
    55. Camp Bread in a Dutch Oven - Brenda's Loaf
    56. Myrtle Allen's Brown Bread by James Beard
    57. Wheat Germ Bread by Wolter and Teubner  
    58. An Experimental No-Knead Long Rise Whole Wheat Sourdough Bread
    59. Doris Grant's 'Original' No-Knead Whole Wheat Bread FAIL
    60. Doris Grant's 'Original' No-Knead Whole Wheat Bread Revisited
    61. King Arthur Flour Kitchen 'Classic' 100% Whole Wheat Bread
    62. My Experimental Enhanced No-Knead 100% Whole Wheat Bread based on Grant/KA Flour 
    63. Experimental No-Knead 100% Rye & Whole Wheat with Sourdough Discards
    64. Revisiting the 100% No-Knead Sourdough Breads, with less yeast 
    65. James Beard's Anadama Loaf and a first attempt at a 100% Whole Wheat Anadama
    66. Entire Wheat Anadama based on Fannie Farmer's recipes
    67. Revisiting the 100% No-Knead Sourdough Breads, with no yeast  
    68. Anadama Bread from Healthy Bread in 5 minutes a Day
    69. An adaptation of Mimi's Rye to my Sourdough Starter (Note: Here is my BREAD SPICE recipe)
    70. A Spent Sourdough Rye and Whole Wheat Loaf
    71. Laurel's Kitchen Black Bean Raisin Bread
    72. Spent Sourdough Rye and Whole Wheat Loaf with boiled seeds and rye meal egg wash
    73. Laurel's Kitchen Loaf for Learning: comparing whole wheat flours
    74. Sourdough Rye with Boiled Grains
    75. Sourdough Rye with Soaked Grains
    76. A More-than 70% Rye Hearth Bread
      77.  
      Somewhere around 6 dozen loaves that I thought of as 'everyday breads', I lost track of what number I was up to.  And the concept of everyday bread became somewhat hazier, as many were inspired by other recipes I had found.  Was the Banana Bread from Fannie Farmer an everyday bread?

      German Style Bread
      My wife was born in Canada, but she comes from German stock, and many times I've heard my in-laws claim that Canadian bread is basically crap.  They say it in the nicest possible way, but they will tell you without hesitation that German bread is superior.  It turns out that I really like the dense and grain-filled breads that remind me of the German Vollkornbrot.  So in my everyday breads, I have been experimenting with German recipes.  A separate index to that exploration and quest for the German loaf can be found here (some of which can be found in the 'everday bread' section anyway).  That includes a lot of recipes that I've enjoyed using Nils Schöner's recipe book, Brot: Bread Notes from a Floury German Kitchen, once freely downloadable, now a Kindle E-book.  Here is a list of some of the Schöner recipes I've tried; all have been very inspirational:

      Granola Bars
      I'm starting to also make some granola bars, as that is a way to include whole grains in one's diet, and I've resolved not to buy them at the store any longer.  I got my start on this by using a recipe I found online at Girli's chef's blog, but there are many recipes out there, and I rarely follow them exactly.  I don't make quite as many as I used to, because frankly, I prefer bread.

      1. Girli's Groovy Granola Bars with Almonds
      2. Girli's Groovy Granola Bars - original, with Hazelnuts, but without egg
      3. Girli's Groovy Granola Bars with Dried Fruit
      4. Joyful Abode's Granola Bar with no baking
      5. Stone Buhr Whole Wheat Bars that turned out more like a dessert bar
      6. Girli's Groovy Granola Bar with Chocolate Cranberries  
      7. Wholegraingourmet's Peanut Butter Energy Bar
      8. Sourdough discard Granola Bar, originally from Wild Yeast Blog 




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