Xesla Research Organisation

Just a few short weeks ago my attention was drawn to a sandwich known as the Shooter’s Sandwich.   It’s a very old British recipe from the Edwardian era designed to be carried by the gentleman hunter to have a good wholesome portable meal while hunting.   In fact it’s almost a portable Beef Wellington. The sandwich [...]

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Ruhlman has a post up on his blog called Ciabatta From Scratch which I would have loved to have had two years ago when I started trying to make Ciabatta. The recipe he has up is very similar to how I now make my Ciabatta ( albiet I use sourdough starter and don’t hydrate as [...]

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Usually when I make pizza I make the bases with instant yeast, but sometimes when I’m making Sourdough Loaves I keep some of the dough aside and use it for pizza. Simply take some of your dough aside after the first proof and shape into balls. Work on between 100-200g per pizza depending on the [...]

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Usually I make Ciabatta with my sourdough, but have recently been working on making Baguettes. I’ve got a few things I really need to nail down with my bread baking, Working with the dough after the first proof and shaping it properly is currently where I go wrong the most. When making bread I usually [...]

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Recently I’ve had a hankering for some Split Pea Soup, usually something I associate with cold winters days … yet it’s the middle of summer. A few things led me to this urge. I had some ham bones from a ham I’d cured and smoked some time ago in the freezer ( My mother used [...]

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One of the issues with keeping a sourdough starter is that you can in a very short period of time end up with a large amount of starter. Every time you feed it you double its size. Unless you take half away each time you end up with enough dough to fill a swimming pool [...]

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