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Does rugbrod, or Danish rye bread, rings the bell for you? You might have tasted it in an open-faced Danish sandwich, served with herring, cured salmon, ground liver or smoked cheese. The bread is dense and dark and substantial -- something a piece of our usual smooth white or whole-wheat bread can't hold up against the richly-flavored goodies on top.

Second bake is for a weekend visit to some friends.

This is a sourdough loaf made using Reinhart's BBA recipe as the foundation, this time with KAF BF (15 oz), Gold Medal AP flour (4 oz), and a bit of rye flour (1.25 oz). I used 10 oz of firm starter ... I didn't measure the flour or water, but I'd estimate it was mixed to 70% hydration or so ... also I used the Gold Medal flour to build the starter.

I'm still nurturing my spelt starter in preparation for an all-spelt loaf later this week, so this is another variation on the country loaf, made with spelt starter that would otherwise go to waste.

I'm quite happy with the rise on this loaf, as well as the flavor that the spelt starter seems to impart. Sorry, no crumb shot, I took this loaf to the office where it was promptly devoured by my team during weekly staff.

Recipe is as follows:

I've made this loaf probably more than any other, and yet I still managed to screw up a few things. This is my Standard Sesame Loaf, though in this particular instance I used a little bit of spelt starter that would otherwise have gone to waste, along with some of my regular wheat starter. I wouldn't call this one of the better examples, though -- rise was a little bit less than I would have hoped for. I messed up here and there, both on ingredients and timing.

Recipe as follows:

Well 2017 started off ok... My first bake was early January 2nd after an overnight cold proof. I made my version of Field blend #2 and it came out beautifully

Last weekend figured I should make some more bread as visitors had made quite a dent in the supply in the freezer. So I decided to have another go at Hamelmans 40% rye with caraway, This time with no yeast and an overnight cold retard before baking.

Mixed levain and left over night on bench

556 g rye flour

461 g water

Happy New Year!

First bake of the year, Reinhart Basic SD, with KAF BF, Gold Medal AP, and a touch of rye flour. Starter was fed with only AP flour.

Oven spring wasn't what I'd hoped, I think the AP flour had something to do with it.

I immediately refed the starter and made another loaf (it's in the oven as I type this) ... I used similar flour amounts (quite a bit of AP) but this time I let it autolyze for 20 minutes and I immediately noticed a difference in gluten development when I started kneading it with my Kitchen Aid.

It's the second attempt of a French Baguette.

Recipe is via google search that had me land a the "Joy of Baking" youtube channel.

No fancy oven stones, yeast, malt, etc. here, just simple all purpose flour from Aldi, augmented with a little bit of sticky rice flower and garden variety yeast.

For what it's worth, I am pretty ok with how it turned out.

My sourdough version of my croissants and pains au chocolat last year. Again, it was inspired by txfarmer's marvelous SD corissants but I want to make it 100% sourdough and I can't and don't measure precisely. Last year's version made with instant yeast was definitely prettier but this SD one had a couple of mishaps along the way so I can say it was still a successful bake to start the year!

I had to go out of town for a funeral so my usual routine of making dough on Saturday and baking on Sunday didn't work. So a yeast bread with multigrain flour and some black sesame seeds that could be done in one day was what happened. The recipe is loosely based on Forkish's Saturday breads.