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Today in addition to the Hamelman Challah, our rye starter was floating so we needed to put together bread.

Inspired by Hamelman's Vermont Sourdough with increased whole grains today's dough is really a 1.2.3 with an emphasis on pumpernickel...simply because I didn't feel like working at it.

384 grams of floating starter, 768 grams of water and @1100 grams of flour split:  200 Whole Wheat, 300 Pumpernickel and 600 KA Bread.  I actually dropped the bread flour a little because of the increased whole grain pumpernickel.

  Bread number two I baked this week incorporated some of my ever-growing collection of dried cherries along with a small amount of shredded cheddar cheese and a multitude of tasty flours.  I wanted to make a good healthy bread I could eat for breakfast and I think the end result fits the bill.

I used some of my freshly milled Durum flour in the stater and incorporated some KAF Oat flour, whole wheat, potato and European flour into the final dough.  Some cracked wheat and rye chops were added to round out the whole grain aspect of this one.

I wanted to make a fairly simple bread good for grilling now that the nice weather has finally arrived.  I decided to use up some of my fresh milled Durum and Sprouted Durum flours along with some European style KAF, cracked wheat and a little maple flavored balsamic vinegar to add a nice sweet after note.

I was actually surprised on how much I could taste the maple flavored balsamic as usually I barely notice it, but my taste testing panel at work didn't seem to mind or notice.

After seeing greedybread post the dark pumpernickel from ITJB.  I just knew that Lucy would want to make her version of this bread since she is nuts about pumpernickel and sometimes just plain nuts.  Here are 2  posts

 http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/42120/finally-dark-pumpernickel

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/42145/are-you-ready-part-2-pumpernickel

We usually have some Challah in the freezer and we like to make weekend french toast with...but we were all out.

My go-to recipe for Challah has been the Ciril Hitz recipe we were given in our October bread baking class.  I even used it for the Easter bread basket.  Since I bought Hamelman's Bread, I decided to use his recipe.

Last week we visited the friendly folks at Breadtopia,  it's only 60 miles away, to look at and eventually purchase a KoMo Fidibus 21 grain mill. Happy birthday to me finally got to replace the old noisy, heat producing, and hard to clean one. While there also got an oval brotform, Durum wheat berries ( pasta machine is on the way ), and some Kamut wheat berries. 

and I think I'm getting the hang of this sourdough thingy.  This week I baked twice, once was a 1.2.3 with a lean toward Rye and today was Hamelman's Vermont Sourdough which is fast becoming a favorite.

I love the 1.2.3 method because I don't have to really think about anything.  I just apply my math and voila....bread.  Guess I didn't score deep enough although the circular design is there.

Signature W...

Hey look Mom!  No sprouts in this bread…….We had planned on making a Dark Pumpernickel based on the IJTB formula that greedybread made a few weeks ago.  But this recipe calls for making a rye starter from scratch that calls for a discard at the end of 48 hours.

Hi Everyone, 

This past weekend was double fun, actually.  First, I had Friday off.  Second, I had been asked to provide some bread for a fundraiser bake sale, so I spent Friday and Saturday baking.  It was a very welcome break from a long baking hiatus while working down the backlog of breads in the freezer.  I don't believe I have had the opportunity to produce this quantity or variety of breads at home previously.