Sharry Miller

Delinquent Baker

Fine, fine, I confess: I've been a bad blog writer. It's been 18 days since my last post and I haven't told you anything about the last four recipes I've baked from Bernard Clayton's New Complete Book of Breads. Please forgive me. Honestly, while I'm still enjoying baking all the recipes, I start to wonder how much I can really say about baking water, flour, salt, and yeast. And then a recipe like Weissbrot Mit... Read more →

Oil Spill Bread

Oil tankers loading at the Valdez Marine Terminal Dang, I didn't realize it had been almost a month since I last wrote. I'm such a slacker. I do have one excuse. For the past 12 days we've been out on our fishing boat working on the response to a small oil spill at the Valdez Marine Terminal. What that's meant is that we've been driving back and forth along a mile of shoreline dragging one... Read more →

Baking Philosophy

No Bernard Clayton's New Complete Book of Bread recipe today. Instead, since I'd offered to share my sourdough starter with a young friend, I thought I'd experiment with it. On the plus side, this means that you can access the recipe yourself without having to buy a baking tome. For some reason, I had scones on my brain this morning. I have a recipe I've used before and like, but since I had the sourdough... Read more →

Rich White Bread

I was tempted to never move past Sister Virginia's Daily Loaf after making it a week or so ago. The loaves I made were as close to perfection as I ever hope to get. And I just realized, after going back to find the link to that post so I could included it here, that I never wrote about it. Oh, dear. I'm slipping already. So, a few quick words about Sister Virginia's Daily Loaf... Read more →

Caraway, Orange, and Bread - Oh, My

For starters, let me be clear right up front that it's not about the yeast. My most recent bread failure, that is. I say "most recent" because it was by no means my first, and I'm equally sure it won't be my last. I speculated the other day that perhaps the reason I baked a brick was because my new jar of yeast was not viable. I have now demonstrated that the yeast was not... Read more →

I Baked a Brick

It is only right that I present a fair and unbiased view of my baking abilities, as difficult as that may be. Like all of us, I want to be seen as a success, but alas, that is not always the case. Yesterday, I baked a brick. Since I started this little bread baking adventure two months (!) ago, I've baked at least two dozen loaves of bread from nine of Bernard Clayton's recipes in... Read more →

Hops - It's Not Just for Beer

I had to embark on an odd, albeit short, research project last week. I was trying to figure out how the volume of dried hops compared to the volume of hops pellets. Hops are the flower buds of the female Humulus lupulus plant. Most of us know them as the ingredient in beer that makes it bitter. The "hoppier" a beer is, the more bitter it is. I'm not a fan of bitter things and... Read more →

A Two-Batch Day

I miss bundt cakes. Are you old enough to remember these dessert staples from the 1970s and 80s? My dad had a real sweet tooth when I was growing up, so I baked a lot of cakes and cookies. Bundt cakes were one of the few we always made from mixes, and my favorite was a chocolate cake with coconut center and glaze. You'd put the chocolate cake batter in a bundt pan and layer... Read more →

English Muffin Bread

I just made the mistake of checking the stats for my blog. Based on the number of page views I've had over the past week or so, I'm writing these posts for the pleasure of the ether, but I will persevere. I'm having a masochistic sort of fun with this project, and it means I get to eat yummy bread. I felt a little less guilty with today's recipe than I did with the Frisian... Read more →

Frisian Sugar Loaf

You ever have one of those days where you feel like nothing you do is enough? Today was one of those days. I didn't do enough work on my paying job, but when I was spending time on that I felt guilty for not creating fused glass artwork for the two shows I have coming up this fall, and when I finally spent some time in my studio I felt guilty for not getting outside... Read more →