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SF SD Pain de Compagne

SF SD Pain de Compagne crumb

These are pictures of the process beginning after mixing.  I made Jeffrey Hammelman’s Light Rye Bread from his book BREAD, A Baker’s Book of Techniques and Recipes (page 197)albeit a slightly modified version.  I would have to say that this recipe is wonderful and very easy to make.  His recipe ingredients consist of 2 parts.  (1) SOURDOUGH, (2) FINAL DOUGH.  He makes what I would call a sponge, which he calls “Sourdough” as the first step in his recipe.  This takes 14-16 hours to ferment.  Then he mixes the SOURDOUGH with the FINAL DOUGH ingredients.&nbsp

I have a variety of grains in my arsenal, and I thought it was time I tried something other than the usual.  I settled on spelt and found bwraith's post on Marcel's Grandmother's Spelt Bread (http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/2828/marcels-grandmothers-spelt-bread).

I don't really know what to call this bread. It is mostly based on the method of Nury's Light Rye. I made that one a couple of times and found it very good, but I wanted a bread with more rye and that had nice big holes but was a bit higher, blown up. I decided to modify the ingredients a bit and then go for a dough that was just slightly more compact. Not a normal bread dough that forms a ball, but not as hydrated. I also proofed it in a banneton for a couple of hours straight out of the fridge. These modifications produced this bread here:

These are ciabatta loaves I made using Rose Levy's Bread Bible recipe.  She doesn't call for "stretch and fold" in her recipe but I did 3 very gentle stretch and folds during proofing, then divided the dough into 4 equal pieces and it seemed to give the loaves better rise and crumb.  The dough is very wet so I very lightly floured the work surface and top of the dough when doing "stretch and fold" (be careful with the amount of flour used to dust the dough or it will leave tell tale lines embedded in the interior of final

A birthday present and long time no baking: had to use the present and bake some!

Suas' Cinnamon Rolls

Baguettes with Poolish

Baguette crumb 

In my ongoing efforts to make wonderful baguettes at home, today I baked the Poolish baguettes from Hamelman's "Bread."

It could probably use a little less flour next time, but I'm glad the holes aren't too big to hold a little butter.

Rusian rye bread 2 boules

Russian Rye Boule

Russian Rye Crumb

I posted a White Loaf a few days ago. I converted it from a commercial yeast loaf that I have been making for some time now. I haven't tried to ferment this recipe until today. I covered with plastic after the first rise (placed in loaf pans) and refrigerated overnight. I assumed that the sour flavor would be dominate after the retarding. After taking out the loaves and a 4 hour rise I baked them; I found the sourness still there but the bread was much sweeter than the ones I do in "a day". They also had a browner crust.