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I have been baking for about 2 years now. A check of my history shows that I have been on the road to enlightenment for 1 year and 23 weeks at TFL. I started with the BBA by Peter Reinhart and then his Whole Grain Breads. A few other books have caught my interest along the way and I noticed that Hamelman's "Bread" always got high marks but some thought he was really talking to the pro audience. I started to notice that many of the breads I liked had references to Jeffrey Hamelman so I thought I would take the plunge and see if I could keep up.

Recently I have been trying to find breads that deliver great flavor with a nutty after taste and also look good. After I found Mark Sinclair's Back Home Bakery recipe for Multi Grain bread I have come to appreciate his experience and sense for selecting grains and methods. I have made 5 or 6 batches of the Multi Grain and it is just so full of flavor I can't get over it.

Here are some pictures of a batch of Hamelman's light rye that I made using a couple of dutch ovens simultaneously.  I did the entire mixing/kneading process by hand just to be able to get a good feel for the dough.  I doubled Hamelman's recipe and made 2 three pound loaves using 2 dutch ovens.

3 loaves

Sponge

512 gram AP

608 gram water

68 gram honey

4.5 gram active dry yeast (1 tspn)

-combine all until very smooth

-ferment 1 hour at room temp, 8 to 24 chilled.

as some rather large cracks were forming last night, i decided to pull out the sand.

and it didn't collapse, explode or catch on fire.

i spent an hour or so patching the cracks and then put a pan of charcoal inside to help with the drying process. tonight i'll light a small fire.

here i am putting the mud layer over the sand form:

from gardener to baker:

up to the thermal layer on a new earth oven, and i hope to be baking bread by the end of july.

I built the base out of reclaimed concrete (a former backyard patio) and scavenged concrete blocks. with the sand, firebrick and tools i'm in this about $120 bucks. and, of course, about 2 grand in labor - but hey, that doesn't count, right?

this took about 3 months from the initial conception to this point, with about 5 good days of work. most of the time was spent collecting the materials.

Hamelman's Pain Rustique modified a bit.

One 700GM loaf

Overall Formula:

AP Flour 95% - 383GM

WW Flour 5% - 20GM

Water 71% - 286GM

Salt  2% - 8GM

Yeast (Active Dry) 0.6% - 2.4GM

TOTAL YIELD 173.6% (4.033)

 Poolish: (50%)

AP Flour 100% - 202GM

Water 100% - 202GM

Yeast - Spec (<1/8 tspn)

Final Dough

AP Flour - 181GM

WW Flour - 20GM

Water - 84GM

Salt - 8GM

Yeast - 2GM (1/2 tspn)