I must be crazy

Yesterday I did my big bake of ten loaves to take to the neighbors for the holidays. After lots of head scratching I decided to work in two batches, the second following 2.5 hours after the first. For once I had plenty of refrigerator space available but only 6 bannetons and 2 Dutch ovens (actually I have more but the oven will only hold 2).

I built my levain the day before, using leftover sifted whole wheat and bran sightings, about equal amounts, and put it in the fridge overnight. I started early and mixed the first batch in my Ankarsrum with dough hook and scraper and left it to autolyse for 1:30, then added salt and levainand mixed with roller and scraper for 2 minutes,and transferred to my bulk container, freeing up the mixer for the second batch. I was able to raise the temperature of 3.6 kg of dough from 65dF to my target 84 in ten minutes with a heat gun blowing on the outside of the rotating bowl.

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Bulk ferment took about 4 hours with 5 sets of stretch and folds, adding walnuts and cranberries after the second set. It was hard to find enough warm places for the dough to rise, especially in final proof. I ended up rotating 2 bannetons at a time through my proofer and a cooler with a microwaved rice bag for warmth, and guessing when to chill them to await their turn in the oven. I guessed wrong on a couple loaves, underproofed but not too badly.

 The main dough was 70% CM ABD+, 30% sifted Red Fife, 2% salt, and 80% hydration. The levain was 12%, and the add ins were 11% of the dough weight (30% cranberries and 70% walnuts).

 The trouble with all that bread is that I also needed to make some for us to eat in the next week, so I built another mostly-bran levain in the midst of this, and today, because my poor little pea brain was tired, I did a simple 1-2-3-bread with white flour 

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Crumb of this one:

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So that was a busy weekend!

Tom