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.We attend an annual Thanksgiving reunion, and I usually bring the bread -- adapted to whatever the menu is.  Often the menu is comprised of the foods people grew up with in Northern Europe just after WWII, and the breads were the country breads of the time. This year, it is a more refined menu, calling for a more refined bread. 

Each year, I put some effort into selecting the right bread, and refining my technique.

Possibilities for a World Series international Community Bake?

https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/world-50-best-breads/index.html

7th TFL Bake, Nov. 6, 2019.

452 g Prairie Gold, HWSW, home-milled coarse.

134 g Kamut khorasan wheat, home-milled coarse.   (586 g flour so far.)

1/4 tablet of 500 mg vitamin C. 

473 g water.  Initial hydration: 473 / 586 = 80.7%

Mix at 10:55 am.

Autolyse time: 2 hrs 10 min.

My first bake with this year's organic grain harvest CSA share from Cedar Isle Farm - an Oat Rye Sourdough - sprouted oats and rye, rolled oats/cracked flax soaker, sifted bran and sesame seed coating.  

Just rye and sunflower seed, to go with the smoked salmon we got this weekend 

During baking there was a nice oven rise but it shrinks by the end of the baking time.  I'm guessing it's because of water loss. 

This bread recipe is gluten free and I've read before that the shrinking of bread after baking happens a lot more in gluten free bread making.  I've never seen anyone explain why this is, though.  It just is.

Hi All,  

I have a barely used Electrolux Assistent, maybe used 4 times and hyper cleanly maintained and stored.  It is white. I can post more pictures if there is interest. Its is basically brand new, with all the basic attachments intact + the mixer unit for milk shakes, ice crushing etc.  Works great and can handle mountains of dough without issue. I was planning to ask $350 on amazon/ebay. Shipping is negotiable. 

Saro

I made babka a month or two ago using a combo of instant yeast, sourdough starter, and yeast water. This time around I decided to follow an actual recipe! This is 100% sourdough babka using the recipe for the dough from Artisan Bryan. I didn't use his fillings and instead did two babkas using a baklava-type filling (walnut, pistachio, almond and rose water) from Smitten Kitchen and one using a chocolate and nut filling.

After some dispiriting failures (the Paul Hollywood organic apple starter, the Pineapple Juice solution), I have three new contenders: George Greenstein's rye sour, Maurizio Leo's rye starter, and Chef Rachida's interpretation of Kristen's starter from Full Proof Baking. Hopefully one of them will thrive. I'm pretty sure I'll be baking Jewish Rye Bread tomorrow--although that bread is not sourdough. Once I get a viable starter, I'm shooting for the moon. I've seen such wonderful posts lately that I cannot wait to get going.

I've been able to bake some pretty nice breads over the past dozen years or so. I give lots of credit to my oven which provided predictable, accurate and evenly distributed heat. It also retained humidity well when set to conventional baking. But it died.

That oven was installed 23 years ago. The KitchenAid folks told me the expected life span of a current production oven is 10 to 15 years. That seems short to me, but I've been told so many times by various appliance sales and repair people that, literally, "They don't make 'em like they used to."