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Two of our close friends have birthdays this month. We decided to host a brunch for them, in part to give me an excuse to bake a challah loaf again. I thought I’d make a couple of changes to Maggie Glezer’s SD challah. Mostly I thought it needed more egg, so I increased the egg from 3 to four and reduced the water to compensate for the 72% of the egg which is water. I needed the challah to make a peach and blueberry strata. Basically this is a type of French toast that you bake in a pan using cubes of the challah.

I've been needing to re-stock on whole wheat flour for a while, but I haven't been able to a good a good whole wheat flour from a local or regional small farm/mill.  After a number of weeks getting by without, doing a lot of porridge loaves for something interesting, I caved and bought a bag of Bob's Red Mill whole wheat to tide me over.  It seemed a good occasion to try another whole wheat heavy loaf.

I've heard that spelt ferments fast, so I though perhaps adding it in later might be a good idea.

300g (50%) Bob's Red Mill hard red whole wheat

Had to wait for the flour which was in a shipping container on its way from France. Worth the wait! Gorgeous flour with flecks of brown . Same formula as before. Absolutely lovely to work with and great flavor and crumb. These are 20% Semola . 

White Bean Marcella soup beans from Rancho Gordo, worth the price they are incredibly tasty with baggie

That’s a mouthful to say and a delicious mouthful to eat.  I have just retired from my full time practice of medicine at the end of last week.  My colleagues long complained that I didn’t bring enough baking into the office.  As you know, it can be challenging to bake during the work week so you can bring it something that is freshly baked.  Well since I’m now retired (I’ll return to work part time next year doing locums) I have time to bake during the week.

I’ve spent almost half my life now trying to understand  this one recipe. I’m 64😱 so that’s a few years.  I’m probably going to my grave with this one but here are  a few new things I’ve learned recently. Click on the link for the video! 

Focaccia Genovese

I have a small quantity of whole einkorn that I need to use up before it goes bad.  I decided I’d incorporate it into a milk bread with most of it being used in the tangzhong.  I decided to do it this way because einkorn doesn’t have the best gluten so won’t add much to the structure of the dough.  The rest of the einkorn goes into the stiff sweet levain along with all of the whole wheat.  The rest of the flour is bread flour comprising 73% of the total flour.  

I've long wanted to try my hand at an imitation of this excellent loaf I had from one of the best bakeries I've tasted bread from: the, sadly, erstwhile Scratch Bakehouse of Syracuse, NY.  

I recently got an order of grains from Redtail Grains, a neat small-scale organic grain farm in NC that focuses a lot on heirloom varietals.  Among that order was some cateto orange polenta which is supposed to be particularly creamy and well-suited to polenta.  So here was my go:

bread flour: 360g (80%)

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I was inspired a few weeks ago by Maurizio's Brown Rice and Sesame recipe to make a multi-grain sourdough using various cooked grains as a porridge addition. After thinking about it for a while, I finally got a hold of all the ingredients that I needed last week and threw together the dough yesterday morning and baked this morning.

    This is a nice 46% freshly milled Durum bread with some bread flour.  I added some egg yolks for some additional flavor and moisture and a little honey for sweetness.

All and all it came out very nice with the nutty durum flavor coming through.  It made excellent grilled bread with some brushed olive oil and melted fresh mozzarella on top.

I topped one of the loaves with black sesame seeds which is one of my favorites.