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Looking for a birthday cake for my smart and pretty, but lactose intolerant stepdaughter, I leafed through my German and Austrian pastry baking books. Nearly every one of those gorgeous torte recipes listed cream as main ingredient, especially the Austrian ones, requiring lots of "Obers" (= whipping cream). But I had promised Cat a German "Geburtstagstorte" with all pomp and circumstances - and finally I found one.

Here it comes: chocolate lover's dream and almost lactose free - Nougat Torte for a lactose challenged, chocolate loving, (no teetotaler) birthday girl!

Firstly, I have a new song to kneed along to. The lyrics are relevant - I can only assume the idea for the video was conceived under the influence of something stronger than fermentation fumes.

The rhythm is slightly faster than my usual kneading rate, but in the same way top athletes often run to music that has a slightly faster beat than they find comfortable to improve stamina, my quest to be a finely honed baking machine will not succeed without a little pain and sacrifice. 

I made a batch of pain a lancienne out of bread bakers apprentice last sunday and put it in the fridge at work. I forgot about it and wound up baking it yesterday, which was saturday. The bread still sprung fine. It surprisingly wasnt that much more flavorful.

I finished my 5th marathon today, Dallas White Rock Marathon, 26.2 miles, 3:51 finish time. It's not my fastest time, that would be 3:43. However, this one has special meaning since for the past 3 years, I had been plagued by multiple stress fractures. I would gear up to train for one, then get hurt somewhere. The last attempt was at New Orleans, I had to stop at 13.1 due to unbearable heel pain, which turned out to be another stress fracture. A lot of doc visits later, it was determined that I was seriously lacking Vitamin D, which affected my bone health.

 This loaf contrasts well with the high rye posted on very recently.   A large boule, leavened with a rye sourdough, comprising just short of 25% of the total flour in the formula.

[A 1.7kg Boule made with Rye Sourdough; that's 3¾lb!]

A few weeks ago I posted on Chad Robertson's Tartine Bread titled A Dissenting Viewpoint. Several other members have posted reviews about the book and their breads since then. One thing I didn't care for was Robertson's confusing and incorrect description of bakers math through out the book. It is true however that if you follow the directions, you will get a great bread, regardless of the math.

I decided to try my hand at making this bread.   I don't think I quite have the hang of making the starter.  Need to work on that.  Glezer's book seems to indicate that the starter should be made in a semi-airtight container and I've read elsewhere that the starter should be allowed to breathe and collect wild yeasts from the environment.  I ended up with a not-quite-sour starter but used it anyway.  Instead of using the non-diastatic malt syrup I settled for a barley malt powder from my local brew shop.

Hello, Recently, Floydm made a lovely potato bread, and SylviaH made Rose Levy Beranbaum's Pugliese - both really beautiful loaves!

The Accidental Baguette