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Sometimes, people just want a loaf of nice white bread, you know? I tried this recipe from America's Test Kitchen's book "Bread Illustrated", and found it to be just the thing. It's a soft bread, enriched with some olive oil and a bit of sugar, made with AP flour instead of bread flour. A pre-ferment (sponge or poolish) gives it a flavour boost too. The dough is very soft and delicate.

SFBI Pain au Levain w/caraway seeds.  Inside and (clearly) outside.

It seems like forever since I baked bread that wasn't rye.  This bake had the most explosive oven rise I have ever had, and I'm not sure why.  These were shaped oval, but almost grew round.  I used 50-50 Central Milling Artisan Baker's Craft and 85 Extraction Wheat, both malted.  I'm not sure what the equivalent percentage WW in this recipe would be.  The recipe is 75-25 bread flour to WW, so my experiment seemed low risk.

I was inspired recently to try a different sourdough recipe, taking some time away from my favourite. Whereas Trevor's has only 50g levain/starter (about 5% of the flour is pre-fermented), the Bread and Butter Project's sourdoughs call for 275g starter (about 22% pre-fermented).

Lots of decorating throughout the house, plus some stollen for when family visit for the holiday.  Maybe some for gifting, too.  Fortunately, the white stuff hasn't shown up outdoors, yet.  

Paul

Can I call this loaf a ciabatta? Well that was the original plan and I shaped according to P. Reinhart, sort of. I only did one letter fold. Well things bloomed beautifully along the letter fold seam and this made a nice sandwich loaf. Gave half to my neighbours and made their little girl's day.

Total flour 350g. I used 35g durham semolina and the balance strong bread flour. I mixed this at 78% hydration using 7g coarse sea salt and 6g EVOO.

the proofed loaf.

Crumb.

This weekend was busy in the kitchen. I was asked to make bread for a thanksgiving dinner.

  Hello all at TFL!  Having spent years in the employ of restaurateurs before making my way into food grade manufacturing and facility maintenance supervision, I have had to learn the importance of Food Safety and Food Defence.

but certainly not my worst ! This is a practice run - I intend to try again next week . It tastes delicious but did not rise as expected. I " babysat " the starter for a week , feeding it every four hours on the final day. The final proof ( in the Brod & Taylor Proofer at 80F ) took eleven hours to reach within an inch of the top of the mold ! I took it out of the oven at midnight...... Just wish I knew what I did wrong . Maybe I should ask myself what I did RIGHT the time it turned out perfectly two Christmases ago ! Merlie

George Bernard Shaw once said “there is no love sincerer than the love of food;” I am re-writing that sentence: “there is no love more sincere than the love of bread.”

Sourdough is one of life’s simplest pleasures. How lucky I am to not have gluten intolerance.