Ann, your baguettes look perfect, your pizzas amazing : ) Like you and Moe, DH and I are fans of sausage and mushroom, but the artichoke-pesto pizza looks very appetizing to me also! You know I’m a huge fan of your artisan dough for both pizzas and baguettes. I rarely get the lovely shine you do, but I can only find the higher protein dough's through pricey special order here, and since DH and I love them as is, I’ll live without.

One of the things I most love about your artisan dough for pizzas, and as is evidenced from your photos; the crust can be made very thin but will still hold up to pizzas topped with tons of goodies – no limp, soggy crust! Of course, that’s also thanks to your guidance on using the grill and pizza stone. We’ve been eating Pizza Hut pizzas lately due to lack of kitchen, and the limp crust (among other things) is not cutting it for me, ha ha! I can’t wait to get back to pizza making with your dough – so easy really.

It’s a cold, rainy day here, and a couple of your baguette slices toasted and slathered with butter would be just the ticket about now. I can practically smell your bread : )

There used to be a popular pizza place in the neighboring town that made pizzas like that. Their crusts were wonderfully chewy and delicious, never soggy.

2Many, I think the flour here in Canada is higher protein, but have you considered buying Vital wheat gluten to make your own higher protein / bread flour?

Sherri, is right. Canadian flour makes a big difference, especially if you want that shine. 2ManyDiversions, when you are ready to bake bread again, try Bob's Red Mill Artisan Bread Flour. I have a friend in Chicago that has been trying all different flours trying to make similar bread with the shine and she finally settled on Bob's Red Mill Artisan Bread Flour. She finally got the shine. It is expensive though.

As usual, Ann, those are pretty much perfect. One of those baguettes, toasted, would be heavenly for breakfast.

Annie

Ann, thank you, I'd found Bob's artisan bread flour but felt the shipping along with the price just wasn't worth is given we already love it as is : ) I can find some of Bob's Red Mill flours but not all locally : (

Sherri.. really? I've got vital wheat gluten but rarely used it as I didn't really see a difference in my sandwich breads which is what I bought it for... but hadn't used it in Ann's artisan recipe - now I will and thank you for mentioning it!

I've never bought or used vital wheat gluten. Probably because Canadian flour doesn't need the boost.

Next time you plan to make that pizza, please invite me for dinner! Yum!

Those of you living in southeastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island Ocean State Juo Lot carries almost the full line of Bob’s Red Mill products at discounted prices. I just purchased a 5 lb bag of the Artisan Bread Flour for $4.99.

MJ

I use Rogers flour for all my breads. Canadian flour. Costco sells their commercial bread flour "Silver Star" which is the one that I use. I pay $13.00 for 20K (44 lbs). So about 29 cents a pound.

Their regular bread flour as well as their unbleached and regular all purpose is sold in local the grocery stores for $13.00 for 10K (22 lbs). If I run out of their Silver Star before making a Costco run, I will use their regular bread flour with basically the same results. Both are high protein.

The amount of bread I make I would hate to be paying $1.00 a pound.

Ann_t,

Yes, I agree for the amount of bread you make you should be buying in bulk quantity. However, I’m not nearly as productive (and experienced or skillful) as you so the 5 lb bag is about right for me. I am in awe of your baking skills and very much appreciate you sharing your recipes and techniques with us.

FYI - there was a typo in my 1st message and the name of the store is Ocean State Job Lot.

MJ

Rogers Bread Flour lists 4 grams of protein per 30 grams of flour. So does King Arthur All-Purpose Flour.

Rogers has 13.3 %. I know that King Arthur has what they call a high protein flour which might have a higher percentage. When we lived in the US I tried all the available brands of flours available and finally started going over the border to bring back Canadian flour. I just could not get the same results with US flours.

That's interesting. It may be that the proportion of the different gluten proteins is not the same.