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Back in April, Khaled let me know he had enrolled in the Sourdough Bread workshop at the San Francisco Baking Institute. I volunteered to meet him there and, after he had a night to recover a bit from the 15 hour flight from Dubai, take him on a tour of San Francisco bakeries and show him some of the city sights. I also volunteered brother Glenn, who lives in San Francisco, to act as native guide. 

As I was looking through Jeffrey Hamelman's book Bread: A Baker's Book of Techniques and Recipes, I saw the recipe for Normandy Apple Bread. Having a couple of apples laying around the house, I thought I would give it a try. So, I started the levain build and then found my dehydrator so I could dehydrate the apples by morning. Took 2 apples for the amount required for one loaf.

That stands for Alfanso’s Sesame Semolina Levain Batards.

  I love pecans and remembered the other day that I had some pecan meal left over just yelling at me to use it.  What better use than in a new version of a porridge bread.

I also found some bulgar, cracked wheat, rye chops and malted wheat flakes to use in the porridge which smelled amazing while cooking.

I used some fresh milled spelt, durum, and rye along with some AP flour, potato flour and KAF French style flour.

This bread is a continuation of trying to perfect a technique of baking in a Kamado style but metal grill. The bread is also an experiment because of using a high percentage of old dough something I've never done before (had a left over ball of natural leavened pizza dough). I know I really need to concentrate on one thing at a time but can't seem to help myself.

Recipe:

315g old dough ( 40% fresh ground white wheat 60% KA AP)

125g active starter

200g water

35g fresh ground Rye

35g fresh ground Einkorn

230g KA AP

10g salt

So, last week I posted the first sourdough loaf that I wasn't too embarrassed to upload on here.

So far, my sourdough experiences, including today, have produced loaves which spread as much as they rise.

Over the last 2 weeks, I bought a couple of things to fulfill my curiosity in bread making. First off, I bought 'Bread Revolution' by Peter Reinhart. It is an interesting book, lots of explaination and beautiful bread pictures too. Though, there was one particular chapter that caught my attention, Sprouted Flour Bread. 

It has been some time since josh posted one of his loaves but of them from long ago was a double levain loaf that has a dark starter and an white starter mix into the dough.  Lucy was taken by this and she put it away for a rainy day but those are few and far between in the 110 F days of summer when the monsoon is far away.

Inspiration comes from a few places.  I almost never crack open either of my two bread baking books anymore, as the world of TFL is the best on the market!  My main interests in the next loaf to tackle are usually spurred on by something in the Bread Browser, the Also on TFL or someone’s Recent Blog Entries posting.