Round Three Thom L. Country French using moutaindog's method
Good morning all! First of all, thanks so much for all your input and suggestions for my Thom Leonard Bread – isn’t the Internet great – you get to meet people from all over and get such good advice. I made my levain last night and got mixing this morning. I did the first mix in the Kitchen Aid but I don’t think it’s big enough to knead this much dough – even the mix was climbing up the paddle. So after the 30 minute autolyse I decided to knead by hand. I have been documenting with pictures and will put the link at the end. The dough seemed pleasantly sticky – stuck to the work surface but not so much to my hands. I used the bread cutter tool to lift it and more or less used the fold method to knead. After 15 minutes it was smooth but not much shine. The dough is doing its first 3 hour rise now and I will flip every 30” for the next 90. I’d love some input if you’ve got time to take a look at the pictures. Thanks! Trish in Omaha Note: The pics are in reverse order bottom one is the levain, far right resting after mixing, the next two are after a 15 min. knead and far left is start of 3 hour rise. 
You had it right the first time, you just needed to click the "disable rich-text" link below the editor before pasting in the HTML.
Thank you!
It's in the oven...I will post final pictures when I can cut into the loaf...good or bad (lol)
Trish - I hope your Leonard loaf came out well, sorry I didn't get back to you yesterday...your dough looks good, though, looks just like mine when I make it. Let us know how you made out when you get a chance.
Hi all – Home from work and just finished loading the pictures of the final bake and crumb. I was pretty pleased with the results – I think I’m almost there. I’d like a little holier crumb and a little darker crust. Now that I’ve had two flops and one not so bad I think I have a feel for how wet the dough should be and I think I need to adjust for my oven in regards to the temperature. Thanks for all your help. I have some no-knead rising right now and just got my cast iron pot from Amazon.com so I’ll be throwing that in the oven later this evening. I’ll let you know how it turned out. Thanks for everyone’s help and assistance!
Hi Trish. I'm learning this right along with you so we can compare notes. I think your bread looks super! I was trying to follow your dough photos and I think I would say mine, both times I made it, was much wetter. The first time I think I tried all hand kneading and it honestly made my stomach muscles sore...hehe. So the second time I mixed longer in the stand mixer, if memory serves me. Then I did have to finish by hand kneading but the dough was always fairly slack and never became a ball like you show in your final photo.
I sound like a broken record but as soon as my new scale is shipped in a couple days (had a long wait for it) I can refresh my starter and make this again. I will also take some progress photos so we can compare notes on that. It is fun to see these things. Keep going, I think you're doing great.
For your reply zola - it seems that maybe we're at the same stage of learning and it will be fun to compare notes, pictures and suggestions. I think weighing with my new scale as opposed to measuring in cups really helped; not only with the recipe but when I try again I will know that I followed the recipe exactly the first time so I'll add a little more water the second time. I know a lot of the bakers on this blog keep notes each time they bake and now I see why. Keep in touch!
Trish
Your Leonard loaves look delicious and I bet they tasted even better...see? - you thought this would be too hard - you got it down fine!