First blog post- 100% rye, Struan, SD, and them dang crescent rolls!

I'm thankful for bread, this website and all the bread nerds here. Hope everyone is having a great day. I've been wanting to share some pictures of my breads, but never seem to get around to taking pictures, but here are a few I've managed to snap. Instead of being in the middle of trying to throw together ten or twelve dishes like I usually am today, I'm lazily putting off making some quickbreads until the last minute and finally gettin my blog going here. My wife has started working nights and we're not having much of a Thanksgiving this year. Well actually I'm deep frying a Turkey at my inlaws, but that's another story...

Blog posts here on TFL are often very thoughtful or instructional. This is neither. Just some random bread pictures.

This is Vollkornbrot made with 100% rye meal because I didn't have the chops, as it were. I've made this a few times now and think these loaves may have used a few more minutes before going in the oven, but overall pretty happy with it. Eating some now in fact, to try and fill my belly and keep away from the pain chocolate.

The next loaf is my adaptation of PR's Struan in Artisan Bread's every day, the book that got me going.

The percentages are pretty much the same as the original, but instead of doing a cold bulk ferment on the dough, I make a poolish with 25% of the flour and mix the cornmeal, oats, and wheat bran in a soaker. Quinoa and raw sugar instead of brown rice and brown sugar. I've started coating in wheat bran because it looks nice and because I bought 20lbs of wheat bran and with less than 1/2oz per loaf going in the dough, I figured I should use it up somehow.

A couple of the less terrible looking sourdoughs I've made. Trying to make large batches of hearth breads in home ovens makes it 'challenging' to get a consistent bake. These started on the lower shelf so they baked on a double layer of quarry tiles and had the ones on top shelf radiating heat down and keeping some more moisture in the area while the crust was setting.

 You can also see some less pleasing loaves flanking these two. I need to work on my slashing, obviously. Maybe getting a lame handle and some razor blades would be a step in the right direction. I've just been using a utility knife blade.

Finally, the bane of my existance. 

So simple, yet so difficult. I am very thankful to have a wife who can sleep through me beating 700g of butter into a thin sheet, and then of course all the swearing while I fold a roll, fold and roll. Sometimes they look like this and the swearing stops, briefly. The plan for the coming year is to make once a week along with filled croissants and danishes, freeze, and then bake in the am's before market. That and get a bigger rolling pin. Or a sheeter....what can I say, I love restaurant auctions!