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Just sharing my 3rd bake with my new Challenger bread pan. Until recently I've been struggling with steaming in my oven but as you can see I think 'problem solved'!

I'm happy with the crust and flavor but I need to work on the rise - I'll be working with the starter feeding times.

This is my stand-by bread.  One of these days, I need to finalize a recipe and stick with it.  For this one, I eliminated the oat flour and reduced the buckwheat flour.  The sorghum, buckwheat, and barley flours were used for a mash, and buckwheat and oat groats were used in a hot water soaker.

Loaf flattened a bit versus springing, but the crumb turned out nice and moist and fairly open.  I keep wanting to make this a hearth loaf, but it's tricky getting it right with the level of gluten free flours.  I may just start keeping this a pan loaf.

My daughter, who is 19, came down with covid and had lost her sense of smell the day before this bake. She asked if this bread had olives or cranberries in it! Think she's on the mend now, and has mentioned that she is starting to taste things again.

This is my first bread with sundried olives. They're kalamata olives and needed to be hand pitted before baking. The sundried olives brought a fairly pungent olive taste to the bread, not unpleasant but tasted like a strong olive oil, and a different flavour to the breads I've made with regular pickled olives. Although only 20g was used in the loaf the flavour tended to dominated, but 20g of sundried olives was around 19 olives, so its fairly concentrated.

The sundried tomato, like the sundried olives, were used 'dry' and weren't rehydrated before using. They were fairly unusual in that they weren't fully dried - they have a nice amount of moisture in them and we keep them in the fridge. So it felt right to use them as they were and they were great in the bread, but next time I'll double the quantity.

The feta didn't seem to do much. The quantity of feta probably also needs to be doubled, and next time I won't crumble as finely.

This bread was made using the food processor to develop the dough, which together with the home made proofing box seems to be becoming my new standard way to make bread.

The water, chilled in the fridge overnight, and levain (from the proofer) were initially mixed in the food processor to form a slurry. To this all the flours were added and were given two 10 second pulses and then left to 'fertmentolyse' for 50 minutes. Then a series of about 4 additional short pulses of the food processor, were done patting down the dough between each pulse to give, in total, another 15 seconds of whizzing. So, a grand total 35 seconds of food processor mixing.

The dough was then moved into the proofer, set to 26°C. Prior to lamination the salt was mixed into the dough by hand, around 1.5 hours after the initial levain mix. The inclusions were laminated in, followed by 2 coil folds. Shaping was done 5.25 hours after adding the levain, with the aliquot just under 50% increase in volume. The banneton was placed in the proofer for an additional 15 minutes before retarding on the bottom shelf of the fridge at 5°C for 15 hours. Banneton was removed from the fridge and popped into the freezer while the oven was warming, which is probably why I did the crazy scoring since the top surface was stiff and easy to score! Bread was baked at 240°C for 25 minutes covered, then 220°C incovered for 20 minutes.

Really enjoying this bread flour which is made from a sifted winter hard white wheat flour. This is my first local flour that has a decent protein percentage, around 14% apparently and it just sucks up the moisture, as well as giving that ridiculous oven spring that I've been envying. It also gives that mouth feel of a high gluten bread, that not unpleasant chewy gluten in your mouth which I've only ever noticed before from added VWG! The hard red wholemeal is a sprouted flour, got a bit chopped off in my formula but think it brought some flavour to the bread, kind of hard to tell with all the inclusions.

Decided to try to make "traditional sourdough" style bread using CLAS and CY. Mostly standard formula, 25% whole wheat, 75% hydration: https://fgbc.dk/1oiv

I used a week-old CLAS from the fridge, and I pre-warmed it before mixing, like recommended for wheat doughs. It contained 5% of all flour for the bread, like recommended for 1st grade or high gluten flour. I reduced the yeast from recommended just a touch, since I didn't want to open a new packet, so 2.4g instead of 3 g IDY.

The dough felt just a little overhydrated, which surprised me, normally the bread flour I have can take up to 80% hydration, although the whole wheat flour I used is much more sensitive to water content. I wonder if the recent rainy weather here increased the humidity... Anyway, fermented it at 25°C, and after three sets of folds within the first 2 hours it had good strength, and was already quite active. I left it for 1 more hour where it increased in size a lot and had a lot gas trapped inside. I shaped it very gently, and probably too gently - I should have made the structure a little more robust, since after proofing the dough flattened out a bit more than I would have liked when turned out on the peel. Oven spring would have saved that though - if a little spot on the loaf didn't get stuck to the peel and got folded under the rest of the loaf! As we say in Russian, "never happened before, but here we go again". Anyway, it still rose nicely in the oven and the bread looks not too shabby. Would have been great if not for this stupid mistake.

The crumb is fantastic, relatively open, yet mostly even. Getting close to the "lacy" territory, not quite there yet. However, there are clear differences from what I would expect from a similar bread using regular sourdough (which might be explained by too much hydration?..). The crust is thinner, and almost completely lost the crispness more quickly. And I don't really detect any sourness in the taste. The crumb is also softer than I am used to. So I wonder if I would prefer higher % of CLAS in this style of bread, perhaps 8% PFF like recommended for whole grain wheat? Or maybe my young CLAS needed a refreshment (which I did this night after baking). Or should I just reduce the yeast and give LABs more time? What I think too though is that the smell is nicely more "bready"!

And now I wish I had a pH meter to compare acidity objectively from the two different methods...

PS

Just checked on my refreshed CLAS and it exploded during the night spilling out of the container! The temperature was right as far as I can tell (I didn't get up and check during the night, but it started right, and was right now - and smells right too), so must be bacterial CO2 production. Need to find a bigger container... I wonder what this change in behavior means, if anything.

Number 2 son and his family are visiting. This is the first face-to-face family contact we have had in a year and a half. It's so nice. It's also an excuse to bake. Here's a sampling of what I've offered ...

Jewish sour rye and Berliner Landbrot

San Joaquin Sourdough Baguettes and Epis

Sourdough Pizzas (This is one of four)

Multi-grain Sourdough's (AP, and home-milled Whole Wheat, Rye and Spelt)

I didn't get a photo of the peach crumble my son and dil made while I was working on the pizza. It was pretty yummy with vanilla frozen yoghurt.

You should know that we don't have any sons who didn't grow into amazing cooks and bakers. 

Hope everyone had a patriotic and delicious and safe and sane 4th of July!

David

Wanted to try something enriched with CLAS, and followed Rus Brot's interpretation of a 1940 Russian recipe for schneiken, meaning "snails" aka rolls - originally German in origin, as you might have guessed. Here is the formula with minimal instructions, since the video is only in Russian: https://fgbc.dk/1ofj

It's a very fast dough since it's based on CY, and yet CLAS adds the touch of acidity and complexity. Can't really say how it compares to traditional SD or just CY, but they are good like this, despite my rolling them out too thinly which caused a slightly towering look instead of more flat and thick rolls.

Here they are just out of the oven:

And this is one of them after covering with some sugar glaze:

The bottoms burnt a little bit, probably because I have a steel instead of a stone, even though I used 10°C lower baking temp than in the recipe. And they bake super quickly, in around 10 min!

I give a lot of bread away to my neighbors and so decided to have a bit of fun and create this packaging...and alter-ego...and fictitious city.  All fake, but the bread is the real deal - 

Boomshanka y'all ! 

Continuing my CLAS experiments, made a whole spelt bread with seeds, following Rus Brot's recipe again, with a large/long pre-ferment, and very quick and warm bulk and final proof. Only uses a tiny amount of yeast (0.15% IDY of total flour). Recipe here. Here is my formula https://fgbc.dk/1ode (I used linseeds in place of sunflower seeds, that's what I had; also wanted to finish the last few grams from the bag of spelt flour, so added just a little more in the final dough).

I think I could have final proofed for just a few more minutes, the loaf got a little tear on top. Very tasty bread though! No hint of apple flavour from a little pureed apple. Almost moist crumb, and very soft. Nutty flavour, both from the seeds and the whole spelt. And I don't know if it's because I'm expecting this from CLAS, but again I feel like the aroma is also just a little more "bready" than normally! But I am not really used to whole spelt bread, so not the best bread to judge probably...

And I probably should have baked a little longer for a more caramelized crust, not sure why I didn't just leave it in longer.

The 4th is a big family gathering every year for my wife, and all of her siblings come back to town.  One of the first items on the list is getting nisu from one of the local bakeries.  Decided to try my hand at braiding and making my first one.

Followed the recipe in the comments of this thread, but adapted it to two loaves. https://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/4168/finnish-nisu-aka-pulla 

Unfortunately, we got hit with a heat wave and humidity today/tonight, so I didn't want to heat up the house.  So...  I baked this one on my new grill with the infrared heat panels.  Used my digital temperature probe for smoking to monitor the temp in the grill.  Placed my pizza stone on the grill grates and then baked the nisu in my Granite Ware turkey roaster.

Overall, went very well for the first attempt.  The dough when first mixed is quite sticky.  Keep needing and using five minute rests.  It pulled together quite well and was easy to work with after the second rest.  Only issue was with the baking...  The grill wouldn't stay below 400 deg F with the burners on the lowest setting, and the bottoms of the loaves are borderline burned.  Next time, I'll have to cycle the burners on and off to hold the temp in the 390-400 deg range.  The steel infrared plates hold a lot of heat, so I don't think the temp will fluctuate too fast by turning it on and off.

Forgot the egg wash...

This is a version of a bread I previously baked in January. I added some whole wheat in place of some of the AP flour in the original version.

I was very happy with how this one came out. The flavor was nutty with a nice moist open crumb. This was a perfect bread for grilling with some good olive oil brushed on and some melted cheese.

I really like the way the scoring came out as well :).

Levain Directions

Mix all the levain ingredients together  for about 1 minute and cover with plastic wrap.  Let it sit at room temperature for around 7-8 hours or until the starter has doubled.   You can use it immediately in the final dough or let it sit in your refrigerator overnight.

 Main Dough Procedure

Mix the flours, egg yolks  and the water for about 1 minute.  Let the rough dough sit for about 20 minutes to an hour.  Next add the levain,  cooked rice, olive oil and salt and mix on low for 4 minutes.  (Note: with the Ankarsrum I adjusted the speed from low to medium).  You should end up with a cohesive dough that is slightly tacky but very manageable.  (Note:  if you are not using fresh milled flours you may want to cut back on the water).  Remove the dough from your bowl and place it in a lightly oiled bowl or work surface and do several stretch and folds.  Let it rest covered for 10-15 minutes and then do another stretch and fold.  Let it rest another 10-15 minutes and do one additional stretch and fold.  After a total of 2 hours place your covered bowl in the refrigerator and let it rest for 12 to 24 hours.  (Since I used my proofer set to 79 degrees F. I only let the dough sit out for 1.5 hours before refrigerating).

When you are ready to bake remove the bowl from the refrigerator and let it set out at room temperature still covered for 1.5 to 2 hours.  Remove the dough and shape as desired.

The dough will take 1.5 to 2 hours depending on your room temperature and will only rise about 1/3 it’s size at most.  Let the dough dictate when it is read to bake not the clock.

Around 45 minutes before ready to bake, pre-heat your oven to 540 degrees F. and prepare it for steam.  I have a heavy-duty baking pan on the bottom rack of my oven with 1 baking stone on above the pan and one on the top shelf.  I pour 1 cup of boiling water in the pan right after I place the dough in the oven.

Right before you are ready to it in the oven, score as desired and then add 1 cup of boiling water to your steam pan or follow your own steam procedure.

Lower the temperature to 455 degrees.  Bake for 35-50 minutes until the crust is nice and brown and the internal temperature of the bread is 205 degrees.

Take the bread out of the oven when done and let it cool on a bakers rack before for at least 2 hours before eating.