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Finally, I achieved what I've been struggling toward for some time; 100% wholewheat bread which is pillow soft and tasty.  A big step was receiving The Bread Bible for my birthday recently - while I haven't tried any of her recipes (which all seem to use white flour, with the odd dash of wholewheat) the explanation of techniques has made a big difference.

So, the ingredients, which are similar to what I've been using to date:

This is different from the traditional challah. From a baker's perspective, the sprouted wheat challah has many things going for it. The use of sprouted wheat and there is no other flour to help or mask its true nature. It is enriched with only egg yolks, producing a tender and creamy crumb. Lastly, no butter is added, making it suitable for a kosher diet. I think the store-bought sprouted wheat flour shines and finds its true expression in the making of this challah loaf, a recipe from Bread Revolution by Peter Reinhart.

Here is my fruit and nut sourdough.... not the rise I wanted as I meant to retard it only overnight but totally forgot it was in my fridge! Got home from work to a very over-proofed dough, however, the crumb and the taste were still pretty good.

450g white bread flour

50g wholewheat flour

100g levain

350g water

50g walnuts

50g pecans

50g hazlenuts

100g raisins

I am continuing my quest for a more open crumb and oven spring using some of Trevor Wilson and Dabrowman's methods. We got "lovely" weather (pouring rain till 3 am which then froze and turned into snow on top of the ice). That made travel rather treacherous so I decided to stay home and bake bread. New things that I tried this time:

Hybrid loaf using Lammas Fayre Medieval Peasant flour. (Previous attempt with all LFMP flour tasted good but quite cakey- not nearly as light as that produced by Lechem)

    Well this was supposed to be one of DA's famous Chacon breads but as you can see it failed miserably in the shaping department.  I used the wrong size basket which I think killed it and produced a nice misshapen blob or something that looks like it escaped from Stranger Things.

So I've been gone for a while. I haven't posted here in 2 years or so, but I have been baking periodically. Here are a few recent projects, some of which I'll elaborate on if there's any interest. I've been doing what I can living in a dorm, but I'm a bit limited in my baking capabilities. 

Lucy did finally back to what we would call normal so it was time to get some holiday baking done.  We managed to get a fruitcake baked off and then we did a 25% whole wheat fruit and nut holiday bread to make up for a few weeks of blandish white bread bakes.

I've finally gotten around to baking from The Rye Baker.  I made red rye malt powder, so the Borodinsky Rye, which he describes as the national bread of Russia, was in my sights.  I loved the process of making the scald sponge, which (here) means making a hot soaker of coarse (freshly milled of course) rye with ground coriander and red rye malt, and then fermenting it for 3-4 hourse with the overnight sponge the next morning before mixing the final dough.  The final dough includes some molasses, the salt, more medium rye flour, some bread flour, and more red rye malt.