Breads for week of August 11th and 12th

I will be baking on Thursday and Friday next week.

• Thursday Aug. 11th I will bake multigrain, golden multigrain, miche and baguettes.

• Friday Aug 12th I will bake semolina, olive, pain au levain and baguettes.

If you will want bread next week, please let me know at least two days ahead, i.e. by noon on Tuesday for Thursday bread and by noon Wednesday for Friday bread.

Please try to get your order in before the deadline. I accommodate late orders when I can but it is difficult to do.

Breads for week of July 14th and 15th

On Thursday, July 14th I will bake multigrain, golden multigrain and baguettes.

On Friday, July 15th I will bake semolina, olive, pain au levain and baguettes.

If you will want bread, please order by email to ag.burnside@gmail.com. Deadline for ordering remains Tuesday noon for Thursday bread and Wednesday noon for Friday bread.

Thanks.

Breads for Thursday July 7th and Friday July 8th:

* Thursday I will bake multigrain, miche and baguettes.

* Friday I will bake ciabatta, olive bread and baguettes.

Please let me know by email to ag.burnside@gmail.com if you would like bread this week.

Truly local.

We are blessed here in the Northside with magnificent trees in our yards and along the streets. They shade our houses, harbor nesting birds and, when storm or disease take them down, bake our bread. A neighbor on Brown Street recently had to have an enormous sugar maple taken down. The tree trunk, cut into sections, completely filled our driveway. Today I will split the trunk into firewood and stack it to cure. Next winter I will bake bread with the energy stored in this wood.

People ask which wood is best for baking. I have found that different kinds of wood burn differently. Hickory and osage orange (hedge apple) and red oak burn the hottest; maple, ash and walnut burn less hot; basswood and cedar generate little heat. So which is best? There are times and situations for almost all of them. When I want to soak lots and lots of heat into the masonry to prepare for a large bake the following day, hickory is my favorite wood. When I want steady heat and wood which pretty quickly burns away to ash just before I load the loaves, I love maple, ash and walnut. Cedar is handy for getting a fire started. I haven't found a use for basswood yet.

And how do the different types of wood affect the taste of the loaves? Not at all. The oven heats to over 800 degrees F and every trace of wood, including even the oils of cedar and pine, are completely burned away. Once I swab out the hearth, there is nothing but heat remaining.

Week of June 23-24

I will bake both Thursday, June 23rd and Friday, June 24th:

Thursday breads will be miche, golden multigrain, and baguettes

Friday breads will be olive, deli rye, baguettes and pain au levain boules.

Please place your order by email to ag.burnside@gmail.com no later than noon Tuesday for Thursday bread and by noon Wednesday for Friday bread.

This week I will bake multigrain, rye, baguettes and pain au levain boules on Thursday, June 16th and semolina, olive, baguettes and pain au levain boules on Friday, June 17th.

The rye will be a lighter loaf than I have baked in the past--more of a deli rye. I am also trying some new techniques with the baguettes to make the crust thinner and crisper--more of a traditional baguette than a baguette-shaped pain au levain.

If you will want bread on Thursday, please place your order by email to ag.burnside@gmail.com by noon Tuesday, Fridays orders should be placed by noon Wednesday.

I think most people on the bread list understand that my oven is heated by burning wood, and bakes just with the heat retained in the masonry after all the coals and ashes have been cleaned out. This system is an ancient one. It has many favorable aspects such as providing a steam chamber while the loaves are baking, which in turn permits the loaves to "bloom" as they bake.

The system also has inherent limitations and one of the chief ones is that from load to load of bread, the heat in the masonry declines. I load the oven according to which types of bread bake at higher or lower temperatures, but at some point, there simply isn't enough heat remaining in the masonry to bake loaves as thoroughly as I would like.

The past few weeks have been thrilling for me because the orders have been large and I have pushed my beloved oven right to its limit--and a bit beyond. In order to make certain I have enough heat for all the loaves, I must either limit the orders I accept or bake the bread over two days. I am going to try the latter approach first.

On the "Next Baking Dates" page of the blog, I have listed the next two baking dates--Thursday June 2nd and Friday June 3rd. I will bake "brown" breads plus baguettes on Thursday; "white" breads including baguettes on Friday.

I regret making the bakery system even more cantankerous than it has been. By baking baguettes on both dates, I hope to permit (most) people to place their entire order on just one day. Interestingly, people seem to have a predilection for brown or white bread.