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I confess this came as an accident.   When I was scanning Michel Suas' Advanced Bread & Pastry, his [b]Caramelized Hazelnut Squares[/b] (page 248) caught my attention.   I sometimes make for my kids Hazelnut Praline Semi-Freddo; nothing pleases my boy more than that Italian ice cream.   Suas' formula to me is like incorporating a secrete ingredient in a delicious ice cream into a bread.  I was however not sure about having to prepare 2 sponge preferments plus 2 levains just to make this "Squares."  

I've decided to blog my baking and look forward to sharing recipes and getting advice from y'all.

For the past 15 years here in Taiwan, I had made far too many doorstops and hockey pucks instead of edible bread, until a couple months ago I decided to invest in a few good books on baking (I got PR's BBA (Peter Reinhart's The Bread Baker's Apprentice), RLB's BB (Rose Levy Beranbaum's Bread Bible), and NS's BLB (Nancy Silverton's Breads from the La Brea Tarpits), and also found this wonderful forum. It's helped immensely -- thank you all!

I call this bread the Super-Soaker because I soaked every type of flour I had for a long time (a day and a half, with about a day in the fridge). the taste was superb, as was the crumb.

By the way, how's my new granite ;)?

Goodness, it's been a while. I've finally raised a sourdough starter, Bud (sorry, I couldn't resist heh heh), and baked my very first loaf of sourdough!

I followed SusanFNP's Norwich Sourdough as closely as possible.

For the blister-inclined:

I started my firm starter last night. This morning I prepared the dough. I did my first autolyse ( I didn't have a clue what that was before TFL). The boules shaped up ok this afternoon. I think they over proofed a little because I had some deflation when I scored the loaves. Using steam was something I wanted to do so I preheated the oven with my cast iron skillet inside along with my stone. In went the boule onto the stone followed  by a cup of boiling water into the skillet. I made use of the parchment tip this time (see, I'm not that slow of a learner).

I wanted to have another go at this delicious loaf 'my new love Scali', this time I used a natural biga, mixed the dough, put it into a lightly oiled container and fermented it overnight.  I removed it from the refrigerator and let it warm for about an hour and then shaped one braided loaf...brushed it with one egg white mixed with one cup of water and spread on the sesame seeds heavily and baked it under my enameled turkey pan lid...giving the lid and oven a few spritz of water just before covering the loaf.  I don't know if I'm going to slice this loaf or freeze it..but

This past weekend, I made a batch of Baguettes au Levain based on the recipe that Janedo had adapted from the Anis Bouabsa formula. This is my third try at this recipe and each time I tweaked it a little bit to correct some aspects that did not turned out to my liking. This time the loaves turned out pretty good with nice oven spring and airy crumb. The crust had nice golden color with small blisters, thin and crackly and deep caramel flavor. The taste was not sour but is rich and sweet with a slight tang.

The formula I used consists of:

I really just wanted to put the dough into a bread pan and see what happened. This is pretty much the same thing as my CaP 2. The difference here was that I introduced two folds during the fermentation and I baked the loaf at 400 F, brushed with egg wash. This is in comparison to baking at 500 F with steam.

It's been a while since I last tried one of Hamelman's rye loaves, so I pulled his book from the shelf and started browsing chapter 6. I have baked quite a few of his rye loaves before, but for some reason, his 70% rye with whole wheat and a rye chops soaker has escaped me up until now. The last couple of rye loaves I've baked, have been from doughs that I've composed on my own, and there's always some winging going on with regards to proper hydration and fermentation times. With Hamelman, it's safe to let one's guard down and simply roll along with his detailed directions.