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Today a friend and I took a little trip up to the tiny town of Freestone to visit the popular Wild Flour Bread bakery. They bake sourdough bread in a wood fired oven. I gotta say I think their stellar reputation is well deserved! Here is the menu:

This time around I chose the "Wonder" white sourdough and the "Wildflour" loaf. Also had to try the lemon blueberry poppy seed, peach pecan, and apple cherry marzipan scones.

With our daughter being home from AP rotation for the next couple of weeks it is all about making her favorite foods including bread.  On the bread front it is all about what can’t be in the bread rather than what can be in it.

Hello everyone,

If you suffer from arthritis,weak wrists or shoulder problem.When you have mixed your dough and it's not too sticky, instead of kneading by hand, roll your dough out with a rolling pin. Place the ball of dough on your bench, roll it out about 1-2cms thick ( you don't have to be too precise) Then with your hands roll it back into a 'log', ball it up roll again. Ball it up put it in a greased bowl,spray the top with oil cover, and allow to rise, 30-40 minuets then roll again. After the second or if you choose third time form your loaf. Let it rise and bake.

Another batch of soSJSD bread.  After the last quasi-embarrassing batch of 105% hydration goop the other day, I needed to get something that looked more like bread on my countertop.

Two baguettes scaled at ~300g each, and one sesame encrusted batard at ~600g.  Tha-tha-that's all, f-f-folks.  (there, I feel better now...)

Steam released and stock rotated.

finally I manage to bake something that looks like this! Used Hamelman's wholewheat multigrain formula.

instead of 2 hour bulk fermentation I did 1 hour and retarded for 2.5 hours (just because I had to go out for errands) and final  proof for 1 hour.

as i couldnt turn off the top element of my oven without activating the fan, i placed a sheet of aluminium foil on top of the dough while baking with the usual steam. Removed the foil after 20 minutes and the result was fantastic. So happy!

Well, now he’s done it.  I was fool enough to rise to the absurd challenge of dabrownman the other day.  He can be a bit like that mean childhood cousin from out of town who visits and convinces me to stick a fork into an electrical socket.  Well, I’m past that age, thankfully (I think), but I still fell for the old fork-in-the-socket routine.  Ouch!

My Father-in-law is staying with us for a couple of weeks so my Wife made him some Sunday Gravy with meatballs, sausage, and pork and beef braciole.  So of course I needed to make a good dipping sauce bread to go with it.

I decided to make a version of a bread I modified from Peter Reinhart's Italian Bread from "The Bread Bakers Apprentice".  He uses a Biga in his formula but I used a AP levain at 66% in mine.  The starter is a pretty high percentage of the overall formal at 44% but in the end it all worked out great.

Several weeks ago, I started a new rye sour - Lucy's way [http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/43019/really-dark-old-school-sprouted-pumpernickel-–-memory-barbra]

I've had my eye on this one for a while and finally got round to it this weekend. A savoury loaf made with Spelt and Semolina. The sesame flavour is strong, but not overpowering. The dough was soft but after umpteen folds, I thought it looked strong enough. I let the boule rise overnight in the fridge again and it looked a bit flat by the morning. But once it was in the oven, it came into its own. It makes a great sandwich with smoked black forest ham and a sharp aged cheese.