Leader's Pain au Levain au Tournesol

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dmsnyder on 21 Oct 2007 at 00:00
I made Daniel Leader's Pain au Levain for the first time today. I added 3/4 cups of sunflower seeds to the dough, but I did not soak them as he recommended. Also, I brushed the batards with water while they were proofing and gently pressed more seeds to the tops. 

The oven spring and bloom were beyond my (modest) expectations. The bread was pretty yummy, too.

Photos to follow ...


David
Toast

weavershouse on 21 Oct 2007 at 12:02

Great job. I wish the photos were a little larger so I could really get a good look but they look  perfect.                                    weavershouse
Thanks, Weavershouse! I wish the photos were larger, too. I had no trouble uploading them, but they would not insert into the message. I literally cut and pasted them from the forums photo viewer into the message. Now, that was on a Mac laptop. I'll try again with a Windows XP machine.
David

Hi there fellow Mac laptop person! Also, you can take any picture with (apple,tab, 4) and a point will show up and this can be moved, clicked and dragged to crop... upon releasing the mouse, it goes to the desktop (picture 1, picture 2, etc.) where it can be browsed and submitted. :)

Great looking bread too!   I can just taste the sunflower seeds!

Mini O

Thanks, KipperCat.

The crust was less crisp and more chewy than it looks.
The biggest "first attempt" factor was proofing batards made with such a slack dough on a couche made with parchment paper, as Leader recommends. It worked well, I think. I was really happy with the bloom. I think I'm getting the hang of this type of scoring.

David