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With few exceptions, most of my baking in the past weeks has been, well, pedestrian.  One of the exceptions would be Bernard Clayton's Pain Allemande Aux Fruits.  There's no way a bread like that can be pedestrian, even if the baker's efforts aren't stellar.  There was also the treat of introducing a young South African friend to the simple joys of a Southern-style breakfast featuring buttermilk biscuits, sausage gravy and fried apples.

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This was my first attempt at actually calculating the sodium in the salt, milk, poppy seeds and bakers caramel and then dividing by the number of rolls.

Poppy seed cake

Black Prince Cake 

Known in Russia as Black Prince, this is a cake made with lightly moist chocolate sponge layered with sauce that tastes a bit like toffee, and finely chopped or ground nuts. My version also includes sour cherries which makes it similar to Black Forest cake. Black Prince in the Wood if you like J

 Ingredients

For the sponge

Wow, it's been a bit over a year since my last post.  Time to rectify that!  I baked my first loaf in 2012 a few days ago.  I meant to bake Susan's Simple Sourdough but after going by memory and adding too much water I had to improvise a bit to keep the overall hydration in the ballpark of what it should be.  Anyhow, the loaf turned out great, with a crackly crust and a fairly open crumb.  Best to all your baking efforts in 2012.

My stocks have been running low. Grains, flour, salt and even the bread in the freezer have all taken a beating over a busy Christmas period.

With suppliers back on board after holidays I was more than a little relieved when a new shipment of biodynamic wheat and spelt grains finally arraived.

Hi all,

Can someone pls inform  me why it is suggested that we use cornflour or cornmeal on the peel, transfer paddle or the couche cloth instead of AP flour or regular bread flour? What's the difference?

I gotta say, that even though I've only worked with whole wheat twice now, I haven't run into an ingredient that puts me on edge as much as this one. 

This bake was triggered by Karin's tease bake here. The recipe is from Peter Reinhart's Wholegrain breads. The bread is an enriched bread that contains lots of seeds, such as sesame, flax, sunflower, and pumpkin seeds (i used crushed walnut instead).