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Hey, hey.  So, it's midnight great time to fire up the mixer right?  Trying this Scottish sponge bread from Laurel's Bread Book.  Have made it a bunch in the KA. So will try it in the big mixer. Capacity prob. The 15 cups of flour total will hardly make the mixer work. Oh well, gotta start somewhere. I like to learn the hard way.  Well, may not like to learn that way so much as it sticks with me.

With the starter that I made a week ago, I finally got to try a recipe using Dan Lepard - The Handmade Loaf.  White Leaven Bread Pg 28.

I halved the ingredient as I was not sure how it'll turn out.  With the freshly made starter,  I just did 1 refrehment.  Made a little too much,  and the rest went to making muffins and pancakes.

Ayway,  it was quite an experience.  I wanted a good well developed gluten,  and I wanted to nice holes in the crumbs.  I decided to do more rest,  stretch and fold and add my salt last.  

Growing starter in the refrigerator is said to minimize the sour taste of sourdough. It also enables us to reduce the feedings from 3 times a day to twice. I find my starters ferment very quickly these days making me wonder if I have enormous invisible colonies of yeast and bacteria in my kitchen. I also ferment water kefir, milk kefir, and kombucha so I assume there is quite a bit of activity going on.

I changed the formula to use my 100% sourdough, the rest is as the same as the formula in the book. It's a straightforward bread, autolyse, knead a bit, add olives(I may just have used a tiny bit more than what the book suggested), gently incorporate, bulk rise for 4 hours (two folds), shape, cold retarding for 12 hours, pull out of the fridge and continue to proof for 100min, bake at 460F for 45min.

This was a simple white bread with small amount of whole rye flour.  The first time I made a similar loaf was coincidently around the same period last year.  Since then, I’ve acquired many new skills and made some progress in making artisan breads.  I felt that I’ve grown in the past year, as a learner, from an infant to a toddler, who is now on her feet confidently and curiously exploring in a giant Breads-R-Us. Thank you again to those of you who have helped me up and walking along this wonderful journey.

There is rye, and then there is rye.  The chief difference is this: with one you bake with and the other you distill. The ingredients (not surprisingly) are remarkably similar, as is the process in many respects.  And both finished products are equally capable of eliciting hurrahs!

This past weekend I was fortunate to be able to straddle both worlds.

Now, posting this on TFL might be a bit like teaching your Nanna to suck eggs. or blow eggs. or whatever the phrase is, I forget.

But too bad, I'm posting it anyway :p

A few points first. Get a good knife, and know your loaf. I have two knives I use for my sandwich loaves - one is quite harsh on the bread and is no use in a soft bread, as it rips it apart. The other is great on the soft loaves, but just doesn't work well in the firmer styles. Practice makes perfect - you come to know what your knife will cut, and what thickness you can slice with it.

After reading Peter Reinhart's Bread Bakers apprentice and Whole wheat breads countless times, doing my best to get what I can from them, I caught my first sourdough using the pineapple juice sollution.  I was rather excited when I noticed it very active and kept feeding it.  I found a recipe on this site and thought it would be easy enough to try and to get more familiar working with a wetter dough.  I noticed that the bread lacked body and strength but baked with it anyways.  I was afraid that the temp would be too hot for too long but I wouldnt know unless I try.&nbsp

My first attempt at some loaves from my 'bourke street bakery' book.  A bakery in Australia and their book was discussed in Shiao-Ping's blog posting.  It's a beautiful book filled with lovely color photos and recipes from this Australian bakery.  My first attempt at the 3 sourdough boule's and one large Apple and Oak battard, listed in the derivative breads chapter.

  My husband was very happy with the flavor and crumb of the boule and I loved the Apple and Oat with cream cheese for a nice breakfast toast.

Rene,  I am glad you liked the pulla!  I love it a lot too!  I know there is a large population of Finns living up in your area and you might be able to get fresher cardamom seeds in Michigan!  In NH, we have cardamom seeds at my health store, but cardamom loses flavor really fast, and I am always wondering how long it has sat at the store and lost some flavor!  Not that many people buy cardamom in that form!  I bring mine from Finland anyway, so I don't have that problem, thankfully!    Take care, Julie J

And to the Red Fox!