Sourdough Seed Bread: Mellow Bakers (December)

As the Mellow Bakers group winds down with its final few breads left in Jeffrey Hamelman's book Bread, I'm trying to sneak in a couple on my 'must make soon' list.  The Sourdough Seed Bread was one that the group did back in December, but that's when we were moving, so I wasn't able to get it done then.

Hubby and I love seeds in our bread, so this one was right up our alley.  I have not made nearly enough sourdough  breads yet, so this one was destined to be made.  The bread calls for a liquid levain build (which is just some bread flour, water, and 2 Tbsp of mature sourdough culture) and a soaker.  Both of these were put together the night before and left to rest on the counter.  The soaker was made up of 1.1 oz (31g) of flaxseeds and ~ 3 oz of water.  I read a comment posted on The Fresh Loaf yesterday that said if you google it,  you will find that soaking flaxseeds in water makes the seeds more readily digestible and I guess helps release some of the good stuff in the flax for our bodies to use.  I had previously thought our bodies only received the benefits of flax in baked goods if it was ground first.  I learned something new!

The final dough for this bread includes two other seeds, sunflower and sesame, both of which are lightly toasted first .  Here are my seeds ready to go, the flax seeds having gotten kind of gooey after sitting in the water overnight.

 The liquid levain, which I mixed up the night before, was to sit at room temp. for 12 to 16 hours.  I mixed up my final dough after 13 hours.  My levain smelled pretty tangy, tasted good and it had lots of little bubbles on the surface so I figured it was ready to go.  I tried to get a good picture of the gluten that had developed in my liquid levain,

but my picture was not nearly as good as the one Joanna took of her levain for this post (second picture from the top).  Her levain was a stiff one, but I think it's a pretty cool shot of the gluten that can develop in a sourdough levain build overnight.

The recipe for this bread was really quite simple.  The final dough only involved combining 12oz (348g) bread flour, a bit of whole rye flour, the two bowls of toasted seeds, water, salt, the soaker, and all but 2Tbsp (returned to the fridge) of the liquid levain build.

The bread, since its a sourdough, and didn't include any commercial yeast in the dough, involved ~ 4 1/2 hours of fermentation time.  I could have retarded the loaf in the fridge overnight, but I hate doing that, because it takes up so much room in my already too crowded fridge.  The first stage of fermentation took 2 1/2 hours and involved folding the dough once.  After this, into the pan it went, since I wanted a sandwich loaf.

The above photo is just before the loaf went into the oven.  For the final 2 hours of fermentation I kept the loaf pan in the oven w/ the light on.  It was quite happy in there I think.  I baked the loaf @ 360° for ~ 36 minutes taking it out when the temperature reached ~197°.

The loaf was beautiful, at least from this side:)  The other side burst open a bit.  Note to self is already in the book  This loaf needs scored.  Even if its baked in a loaf pan, I believe it needs scored since the loaf will split, burst open, if you don't.  When the crust starts to form and when the pressure builds inside the baking loaf, it will seek to release this pressure by opening at the weakest point in the loaf.  I should've gone w/ my gut feeling that told me before I slid this into the oven, that it needed scored!

Over at The Fresh Loaf site, the consensus was that this was not a good sandwich bread, which dampened my spirits a bit as my 'intended for sandwiches' loaf baked away in the kitchen.  Hubby and I think, though,  that this will make wonderful sandwich bread.  He took his usual turkey/cheese sandwich to work for lunch today, so when he gets home we'll see how he liked it.  For myself, my lunch sandwich is usually peanut butter and jelly, but today I just warmed a slice and slathered on the fresh ground peanut butter.  Yum!!!

Herbed Fougasse Without Olives (Mellow Bakers: November)

After being away for four days, all I could think of when I got home was how much I wanted to bake something.   So since I'd only completed one of the Mellow Bakers November breads so far, I decided to whip up the Pate Fermentee for the Fougasse on page 278 of Hamelman's book, Bread, late on Saturday night.  I guess I had too much pent up energy after not cooking, doing dishes, or even laundry for 3 1/2 straight days!  It was wonderful, and I had such a good time seeing my cousins (and their kids) and my aunts and uncles which I hadn't seen for 2 years.  I think we had ~42 people at our Thanksgiving get-together.

The original recipe for this Fougasse calls for olives to be mixed in w/ the dough at the end, but since I didn't have any olives in the house and since I love herbs, I decided to use Cathy's idea and add Herbes de Provence to the dough.  It seemed quite fitting to add this particular herb mix, since fougasse is a regional specialty of  Provence in France.  I only made half the recipe for this bread, so I only made one round fougasse and added 1 1/2 tsp of Herbes de Provence to my dough.  I also incorporated Cathy's change to increase the salt in the recipe since I omitted the olives.  For the half recipe I made, I added an extra half teaspoon of salt to the salt already called for.

This bread is so simple to put together and looks quite impressive when its finished baking.  I had already made a fougasse earlier using the traditional 'leaf' like scoring so I wanted to do something different this time.  I noticed the round shaped fougasse in one of the color photo plates in the middle of Hamelman's book and thought it looked pretty.

I also made some dipping oil to accompany our Herbed Fougasse.   I just used a heaping teaspoon of Herbs de Provence, adding in some red pepper flakes, fine sea salt, garlic, fresh pepper, and dried oregano and then some extra-virgin olive oil. Then it sat for awhile so the flavors could mingle a bit before we had dinner.

Hubby complained that the fougasse didn't quite go with the salmon patties I had on the menu for that evening's dinner, but it turned out to be a fabulous fougasse and it didn't matter what else was on the table.  The next night we finished off the fougasse w/ some Cream of Wild Rice Soup and we were in heaven with our bellies full of fougasse and steaming hot soup:)

I hope everyone else had a wonderful Thanksgiving!!  I was thinking about my online baking friends all during my Thanksgiving break, grateful for their kindness and willingness to share baking experiences and also wondering what they were cooking up in their kitchens for the holidays.

Five-Grain Sourdough w/ Rye Sourdough (Mellow Bakers: November)

I decided to bake the Five-Grain Sourdough first this month for mellow bakers, since I hadn't used by starter to bake with in awhile and  I was eager to try it after reading Cathy's post on this bread.  She did an excellent post of this bread here and like her, I didn't have any rye chops so I thought it an excellent idea to use rye flakes, which I have, and to make a cold soaker as opposed to a hot one.

I chose to cut the recipe in half for this one, whereas Cathy made the whole recipe, and since it was a cold soaker I decided it wasn't necessary to include the salt in it.  I added the salt in when I mixed up the final dough.  I included some process pictures below for fun, since the shaping process went smoothly and I was in the mood for taking lots of pictures.  I'm also trying to learn how to use Picasa to do fun things like making collages and this gives me more practice.

The top left picture is the dough just after pre-shaping.  I used ~ 2lbs of the dough for my batard and since I only had 8 ounces left, I decided what the heck, rolls would be nice for dinner.  So with the 8 oz piece of dough, I made two little 4 oz dinner rolls.
 

I folded the dough for my batard just like Cathy did, except that I added the 4 or 5 extra steps that JH includes in his book Bread on page 72, which is what I was doing in the bottom left picture.  I finished the final shaping of my batard and the rolls and transferred them to a piece of parchment on my peel, covered them for their final fermentation, and then scored them after ~ 70 minutes.  Since Cathy liked her loaf with the single score down the middle I went with that one too.  I tried snipping my rolls w/ the scissors for scoring, but the slits actually just closed right back up when they baked :( 

 

It's always fun to see just what shape the bread is going to assume after scoring it, since for the home bread baker like me,  the scoring is a constant struggle and learning process.  On this one my bread opened WAY up, and it looked pretty neat.  It almost kind of looked like it had an 'ear' on top, but I'm not really sure.  Regardless of whether the scoring was correct, hubby and I thought it looked wonderful and possibly like I'd just gone and picked it up from the corner artisan bread bakery :)

The loaf was soft inside, but the crust is firm and just slightly crunchy, which hubby said was a good thing.  We couldn't really taste much tang from the sourdough component, but it does have a mellow, nutty quality.  I made the loaf on the day I did, with the hopes that it might make good grilled cheese sandwiches to go w/ homemade tomato soup the next night.  It tasted super as 'grilled cheese bread', and I think I'll probably make this one again, as it is quite tasty.  The batard shape made it much easier to get nice sandwich slices from it, which can be more difficult when I shape the loaf as a round boule.

Mmmmmmm, it doesn't get much better than grilled cheese and tomato soup on a rainy, cold evening after a difficult day at the office (for hubby)!

Berne Brot Six-Strand Braid (Mellow Bakers: October)

I was excited and very nervous at the same time, when I saw that a braided bread was on the agenda for October for Mellow Bakers.  I have wanted to try braiding for quite awhile now, but just kept putting it off.  So this past week I bought a small pack of Play-doh, as suggested by Hamelman, to try and practice the braiding pattern for the six strand braid from the book Bread.  I managed to start the braid looking at the four pictures on page 305 of the book, but I just wasn't seeing the pattern.  I am a visual person and I do best if I see someone else actually doing something a couple times and then I try it myself.  It was also difficult working with the Play-doh, because even though I tried making the strands thicker, they kept breaking on me as I was braiding.

I had made up the dough for the Berne Brot, (which is a braided Swiss bread), the day before I planned on braiding it.  Hamelman had suggested that this dough was one that lended itself well to overnight retarding in the refridgerator.  I wasn't really all that interested in attaining the benefits of overnight retarding, which are improved dough texture and keeping quality, as I was in getting my head around that six strand braiding technique.  I was almost ready to ask my hubby for help, because he's really good at that sort of thing, seeing patterns and such, but then I thought I'd just see if there was a video on the internet that might help me.

It turned out to be very easy to find the video I was looking for.  The first video I opened up seemed perfect for me.  It was straight forward and Maya braids the whole challah from start to finish slow enough for me to grasp the pattern after watching it several times.  Here's the video in case you've had trouble with a six-strand braid or are thinking about having a crack at it for the first time,

I couldn't bring the computer downstairs, so even though I felt kind of silly doing it, I opened up a small card table next to the computer, brought my rolled out strands, parchment paper and sheet pan upstairs and started the braid with Maya as she did hers in the video.  After finishing the braid, I was shocked that it had seemed so easy.  I stood back to admire it, and thought surely I must have somehow messed up the pattern somewhere, but I believe I actually nailed it.  My next thought was, 'Yes, bring on more strands!'  I was pumped and wished I had a bunch more strands waiting there for me to practice on :)

I wasn't sure if the braid should be baked on a stone or not, so I just decided in the end, to bake it on my sheet pan.  I covered the braid with plastic wrap and a tea towel and let it proof for an hour and a half after braiding it, and then after applying a generous amount of egg wash and the sesame seeds, I popped it into the oven.  Here it is just before it went in,

I usually don't do this, but I was so excited about making my first braid, that I sat on the floor in front of the oven window, with my knees pulled up and my arms wrapped around them, and watched the baking braid almost the entire time.  It came out of the oven with a beautiful golden brown color, and it smelled rich and buttery.  We had four slices of the loaf for dinner with some Italian Wedding Soup, and I think we were a little bit surprised how wonderful it tasted; fluffy soft, buttery with a smidgen of sweetness.

Golden slices destined for French Toast

Most of the rest of the loaf was used in French Toast the next night for dinner.  Abby, over at Stir it! Scrape it! Mix it! Bake it!, was nice enough to share her go to recipe for French toast and, even though hubby is not a French Toast person, he said it wasn't bad.  I love French Toast so I was really, really happy with dinner and hopefully he will let me make it again since it wasn't similar to his previous encounters with eggy, soggy French Toast!

Now that I've made one braid I'm all ready to try another, maybe even that Winston Knot one, but we'll have to see.  Abby did a wonderful job on the Winston Knot braid with her Berne Brot.  Check it out here.

Whole-Rye & Whole-Wheat Bread (Mellow Bakers: September)

This Hamelman recipe, found on page 195 of his book, Bread, was the perfect opportunity to try out my new round banneton, which I got for my birthday in June.  I feel so bad that I hadn't tried it out yet, but time just flies and before I knew it, September's here.  My little 8 1/2" cane basket,

waited patiently for me though, nestled in its emerald green papasan chair in the living room. 

The recipe for this bread was interesting in that it contained 25% whole-rye flour, all of which was acidified in a sourdough prepared the night before, 25% whole-wheat flour, and a bit of commercial instant yeast.
According to Hamelman, the combination of the whole wheat along with the acidified rye is supposed to make a bread with good moisture retention and good keeping qualities.  The rye sourdough, the whole-wheat flour, high-gluten flour, water, salt and 1/2 tsp  instant yeast were mixed together on baking day to form the dough.  My dough seemed quite tacky in the mixer bowl, although I didn't think it needed more flour at that point.  However, when I went to take the dough from the mixer bowl and then later when shaping, it was fairly sticky and I had second thoughts. 

I floured my new banneton really well with rye flour since the dough was extra sticky.  It was so sticky that I had trouble forming my boule and then getting it off my fingers and into the basket for its final fermentation.  It kind of flopped off my hands into the basket and was sort of off center, but I didn't want to mess with it, because that's when I start making things worse.  I covered it with plastic wrap and a tea towel and left it for an hour and 15 min.  When I uncovered the basket the dough ball had poofed up nicely and filled out the basket.  Magic!

I placed a piece of parchment on my peel, placed the whole thing upside down on top of the basket and then flipped the whole thing over so that my basket was now upside down on my peel. 

Got that?  Keep your fingers crossed.

I lifted the basket and it didn't stick!  Woohoo!!

My scoring of the loaf even went well this time,

I baked the loaf on my stone until the internal temperature said ~ 204°.  I was surprised the loaf wasn't darker, but I took it out anyway. 

I didn't cut into it yesterday, but waited til today, so I could make a nice sandwich for my lunch with all the fixin's,

I don't know about peanut butter & jelly sandwiches, but it made me a wonderful turkey sandwich for lunch.  I got fancy today and added all the extras.  Normally my lunch sandwiches are peanut butter & jelly, and if I do lunch meat, it is only lunch meat and cheese, no veggies cause I'm kind of lazy when it comes to lunch.

Great bread!!  Has a slight tang, and interesting flavor from the combo of wheat flour and the rye component.  It's more dense than an all white flour bread, but I didn't think it was too dense at all.

Check out what other Mellow Bakers did this month here.

Whole Wheat w/ Pecans & Golden Raisins (Mellow Bakers: September)

I had already decided that I wanted to make this bread into rolls.  Then, as usual, I reasoned that soup would be the best dish to serve my rolls with.  Next, I needed some cooler weather to go with the soup and rolls.  Last week (or was it the week before) there was a brief cold spell following behind Hurrican Irene, but it was gone before I got a chance to make the rolls.

Then, this week another cold front was supposed to be moving thru last evening.  The rain and cold came about 5 hours after dinner, but these rolls and the soup tasted delicious anyway.  I only made 1/3 of the recipe, since I didn't want a ton of leftover rolls, and was able to get 7 good size rolls out of this amount of dough.  It's amazing that these tasted so good, when the only ingredients were flour (whole wheat & bread), water, salt, yeast, raisins, and pecans. 

Since Hamelman said keep the toasting light, I toasted my pecan pieces at 350° for 2-3 minutes, just until they were shiny and started to smell nutty.  The raisins were soaked in warm water for 30 minutes before adding to the dough.  I dried the raisins off really, really good before adding them in.  I didn't even bother using the mixer to try and incorporate the raisins and pecan pieces into the dough.  Its just easier to stick my hands into the stand mixer bowl and knead them into the dough right in the bowl.  As I kneaded, I has happy to deposit the pecan pieces which kept popping out of the dough, into my mouth, since, as usual, my tummy was growling as I was working.

After a rather long fermentation of two hours, with a fold in between, I portioned the dough into 3 oz pieces, covered them for 10 minutes, then shaped them into round rolls.  They had a final fermentation of about 1 hour and baked for ~18 minutes on a parchment lined sheet pan.  I tried to score a couple of the rolls for fun and left the others alone.   There was already a steam pan on the bottom oven shelf from baking hoagie rolls a few hours earlier, so I went ahead and put some hot water into the steam pan right after I slid the rolls into the oven.

 

The soup I chose to go with the rolls was from Dara's Cookin' Canuck and it was delicious!!  It was Chicken, Corn & Potato Chowder and had just enough spice to warm you, but not any burning heat.  It had green chilies, lots of corn, cheese and a pinch of cayenne pepper in it and was topped w/ bacon, more cheese, and chopped green onion.

Hubby didn't come right out and say the rolls were delicious, probably because of the nuts, but when I asked him if he liked it, he heartily shook his head, as his mouth was full of hot, buttered whole wheat roll.  I think we both like most of the breads I make, just because they taste so much better than what you can buy at the store.

Here's a picture of just the hoagie rolls that I made earlier in the day.  It was my first go at making hoagie rolls and I was really happy with the way they turned out, despite the one roll that kind of resembles a bowling pin shape:)  The hoagie rolls are being turned into Greek Turkey Meatball Subs tonight.  Mmmmmm!!

Be sure and go see how the whole wheat w/ pecans and golden raisins bread turned out for the other mellow bakers this month!

Oatmeal Bread with Cinnamon & Raisins (Mellow Bakers: August)

I was in the mood for a sweeter bread today, and since August is nearly over, I thought I'd get in one last Mellow Baker's bread from August's list.  I still hope to try the Black Bread, but that'll have to wait for now.

It feels a little awkward posting today, as I've not done one in a number of weeks.  I'm very sad to say that we lost our 12 yr old golden retriever, Tucker, a few weeks back and that is the reason for my temporary absence.  Its been really hard for Dean and I thru this, as Tucker was such an integral part of our lives and just like our child.  I will miss my sous chef incredibly, but  in my mind I will always have him lying on the floor beside me, encouraging me thru my baking adventures.

My husband encouraged me to not give up the blog just yet, so here I am posting about this wonderful bread I made today.  I just consumed one of the cinnamon buns, and it was so worth the effort to make these this afternoon.  I cut Hamelman's recipe from page 236 in his book, Bread, in half and made a medium loaf  (8 1/2 X 4-in pan) with 1.5 lbs of dough, and 4 cinnamon buns with the 14 ounces left.  I decided I wanted an added bonus from making this recipe, in that I got an afternoon snack.

I wanted a cinnamon-sugar swirl in my bread, but I didn't want my raisins falling out of the swirl, so I decided to incorporate the raisins into my dough.  Also, for the dough I made my usual change in that I used King Arthur's Baker's Special Dry Milk plus water in place of the milk called for.  I incorporated that change into the recipe for the Oatmeal Bread, which is now in our regular rotation, and it seems to work well.  I decreased the yeast percentage used to 2% as well, since I wasn't going to incorporate the cinnamon into the dough.

I was so pleased that I was able to get 4 buns out of my leftover piece of dough.  Perfect!!  Three for me, one for hubby. Oops, sorry! That's 2 for me, 2 for hubby.  I think I will save my other one for breakfast and heat it up in the oven.  I placed the four buns in my smaller 8-in round pan, instead of on a large sheet pan, so that I could fit both the loaf pan and the buns onto the same oven shelf.  I baked them at 350° with the buns finishing in ~25 min. and the loaf in about 34 minutes.  The heated cinnamon-sugar smell filled the whole house as they baked.   Aaaaah, it was wonderful.

After letting the buns cool for 10 minutes in the pan, I made up a smidgen of glaze to drizzle on them.  I used maybe a third cup of confectioners sugar,  a little warmed milk, and 1 drop of my favorite secret flavoring,

I didn't even use half of the glaze though, because hubby does not like his buns highly sweet and all gooey and neither, really, do I.  The bread is almost ready to be sliced so I can see how the 'swirling' looks...  Here it is,

Mmmmmm, nice tasty, toasting bread for breakfasts the rest of this week.

That's all for this time and hopefully I'll see you in September :)  Don't forget to visit mellow bakers to see all the wonderful breads baked in August.

Focaccia w/ Herb Oil (Mellow Bakers: August)

After seeing Abby's wonderful focaccia and reading her encouragement to make this, I decided to whip it up this weekend.  I decided to make up the full batch of biga from the ciabatta recipe on page 105, but I had planned on only using 2/3 of it for the final dough.  I figured 2/3 of the ciabatta recipe would be just enough to make both the regular focaccia and the focaccia con formaggio.  However, as quite often happens when I do things like this,  I goofed and put the whole biga in with the other ingredients when I was mixing up the final dough, instead of only 2/3 of it.  I didn't realize my error until all the fermentation was finished and I was ready to put my dough into the pan.  I was mad at myself for committing this blunder, and hoped that it didn't have an adverse impact on the finished product.  As Abby said, this dough was very wet and quite sticky.  I even tried oiling my hands really well, but it didn't seem to help much. 

I don't have a 10-inch cake pan so my focaccia ended up going into my 9 inch cake pan, and I just used an ounce less of dough.  Since I had my PR book, 'Bread Bakers Apprentice', open to his focaccia recipe, I decided to just go ahead and make the herb oil he describes, for mine as well.  I didn't have any other ideas and it won't be too long before cooler weather comes and the only way to get fresh herbs will be from the grocery stores.  I used a generous amount of fresh basil and rosemary.  I didn't have fresh oregano so I threw in dried.  I think I had about 2 heaping tablespoons full of herbs that I put into my 1/4 cup of warmed (to ~ 100°F) olive oil.  To the warmed oil I also added kosher salt, fresh ground pepper and a minced garlic clove.  Mmmm did it smell good. 

I put 2 Tbsp of plain olive oil into my cake pan, which I had lined w/ a piece of parchment.  I made sure the bottom and sides were nicely coated.  After reading Jeffrey's instructions for shaping and panning the focaccia, I thought 'Heck with that!!  I'm not shaping and then trying to move that very wet dough to the pan'.  So I did what Mr. Reinhart recommends, and that was to put the dough into my cake pan, smoosh it out a little bit, pour on a generous amount of my herb oil and then using my fingertips, to dimple the dough until it stretched out and just touched the sides of the pan.  I covered it for 1 1/2 hours for its final fermentation and then into the oven it went. 

As we were sitting down to dinner, hubby had already tried the focaccia before I had touched mine, and he says 'you better let me have yours, it tastes aweful'.  He said this with such a straight face, and is usually very honest w/ me, that I almost believed him (especially since I was worried that my biga blunder might have hurt the dough in some way).  Then I detected a slight upturn at the corners of his mouth and realized he was fibbing to me. 

This focaccia was absolutely awesome!!  This is our favorite focaccia by far, compared to the others I have made so far.  It is incredibly light, even compared to the others I've made.  Here are our first two slices, which we devoured, and then decided to finish off the whole thing, since it always tastes best straight from the oven the first day.

So, I have to ask, for those who have made the BBA focaccia and this one, is the BBA focaccia even better than this one?

Oatmeal Bread (Mellow Bakers: August)

We were finishing our last loaf of bread on Friday, and I saw that the Oatmeal Bread was on the list for Mellow Baker's for August, so I thought I'd give it one more try.  I made this bread back in February maybe? and I was not too crazy about it. 

When I made this bread the last time and saw that overnight retarding would work well for this straight dough bread, I decided to go that route.  I really love being able to mix up the dough for a bread, and then shoving it in the fridge until the next day when I just have to shape, proof and bake.  On page 232 where it explains that overnight retarding can be used for many of the breads in the straight dough section, it says 'little time' is needed the next day to finish the job.  So when I looked at the oatmeal bread recipe and saw that final fermentation was 1 to 1 1/2 hours, I assumed that was roughly the time it would take to proof after it came out of the fridge and was shaped.  I cut the recipe in half last time and proofed it in a 9" by 5" pan and I remember wondering if I had used the wrong size pan, because after an hour and a half, the loaf had still not crested the lip/edge of the pan.  I was puzzled and I think I let it proof a bit longer, but not much, and threw it into the oven, as I was concerned that the dough would overproof.  I thought maybe I had done something else wrong that prevented the dough from rising very much in the pan.  Anyway, that loaf I made back in the winter was pretty flat when it finished baking, and I thought it was dry, dense and I couldn't taste any sweetness to it at all.  I actually thought it tasted quite bland.

This time around I thought I'd change up the ingredients just a bit to try improving the flavor and/or texture.  Sometimes I make changes, though, and I'm not sure why I did it.  I just think it might perhaps bring some improvement.  I used whole milk as opposed to 1%.  (I had a small quantity of whole milk in the fridge this time, because I had been using it for a Nick Malgieri cake recipe).  My thinking was that perhaps a higher fat content in the milk might make a more tender loaf.  Instead of the King Arthur whole wheat, I used their white-whole wheat and I subbed some barley flour for part of the wheat flour as well.  I had just made some cookies last week with oat flour, barley flour and whole wheat flour and I thought the barley flour might give a more complex, nuttier flavor to the bread.  I didn't have enough high-gluten flour, so I had to use some of my bread flour.  I used 1/4 tsp less salt than called for when cutting the recipe in half, but don't ask me why.  No reason. 

Just like last time, the loaf hadn't even risen above the lip of the pan after 1 1/2 hours of proofing in my 9 by 5 pan.  I looked at some of the recipes in Peter Reinhart's book Artisan Breads Every Day, and those loaves required 2 1/2 to 3 hours of proofing after the dough was shaped and had come from the fridge.  So I decided everything was fine, and that I'd just leave the loaf go for 2 1/2 hours and then come back to it.  When I came back, it had crested the top of the pan and was ~ 1/2 inch above the lip of the pan.  I left it go another fifteen minutes and decided it was probably ready to go. 

The loaf had nice oven spring and rose at least another good half inch or so upon baking.  I was fairly pleased with that.  The loaf didn't taste nearly as dry this time I believe.   It slices very nicely and doesn't seem  too dense.  I still don't taste any sweetness at all, but maybe its just me.  I think next time I'll use agave nectar and see if that gives me my sweetness.  It tastes much better than before, but I'm going to increase the amount of barley flour next time anyway, just to see if I get a more pronounced nutty flavor. 

Now its on to the bread I'm really looking forward to, the Oatmeal Bread w/ Cinnamon and Raisins

Hamelman's Olive Levain as Fougasse (Mellow Baker's: July)

Usually after a day of baking our sandwich bread, I'm breaded out for a couple days and don't feel like baking the next day, but this week I found a little extra energy Wednesday night to mix up my liquid levain for the olive bread.  I wasn't so sure we'd like this bread because of all the olives, but I was excited to try shaping the bread as fougasse.  I figured I would be thrilled if I could accomplish that, and wouldn't be upset if I didn't like the taste of the olives.

After looking everywhere, I finally found a jar of the nicoise olives at a store here in town that carries alot of gourmet type specialty items.  I looked at the itsy bitsy olives in the jar and knew they probably contained pits, but I thought no problem, I'll just squeeze them one by one and the pit will just pop right out.  Wrong!!  I waited until the morning to open the jar of olives and pulled out the first one.  Well, I squeezed and squeezed and managed to squirt juice on myself, but no pit popped out.  So, at 7 am in the morning, I'm sitting in my PJ's at the kitchen table, using a small paring knife to carve the olive flesh away from the pits of these olives.  After pitting all the olives I dumped them into my bowl to weigh them and found I only had 2 1/2 oz and I needed 4.  Aaaargh!  So after some debate, I trudged off to the grocery store and scooped 8-10  olives out of the Mediterranean mix at the olive bar there.  I went home and pitted these and dumped them into my bowl and had exactly 4 oz.

I was really nervous about just using Lucky, my starter, to leaven this bread.  This was another reason I was anxious to try this bread.  I've not had much success using my sourdough starter in breads containing no commercial yeast.  I resisted the urge to add just a pinch of instant yeast, and hoped Lucky would work its magic. 

I let my liquid levain sit on the counter almost a full 16 hours, and during the bulk fermentation of 2 1/2 hours I folded the dough once.  It didn't rise a huge amount during the fermentation, but there was definitely alot of gas bubbles in the dough when I folded and shaped it.  After bulk fermentation, I shaped the dough into a rough round and covered it for 15 minutes.  Then, using the rolling pin, I flattened the round into an oblong shape.  I brushed it with a little olive oil, and covered it again for an hour. 

After the hour was up, I stretched the dough, shaped it into a triangle and used my pizza wheel to cut the slits into the dough.  (I put a piece of cardboard under the parchment while I was cutting my slits so as not to slit my mat or peel.)

To open up the slits, I stretched the dough from the sides a bit, and then stuck my fingers right into each slit and opened them up nice and big, so that when it baked the holes wouldn't close back up.

I slid the fougasse onto the baking stone and baked with steam at 450° for 20 minutes and took it out to cool.  I was so happy with the way it looked coming out of the oven.  I even thought for a moment about just hanging it on the wall in the kitchen as a decoration instead of eating it. 

Hubby and I were both a little apprehensive about this bread, not knowing what to expect flavor wise.  We've grown up on those squishy, kind of tasteless really, California black olives from the cans and not really experienced the taste of a good olive.  We have however tasted one other type of olive quite a bit and thats the kalamata, which we both rather detest, especially me.  Its just so bitter that I can't stand eating them on salads, etc. 

Surprisingly, the bread was good.  There were a lot of olives and you definitely did get a taste of them in every bite.  The olives were slightly bitter, but with a little butter smeared on, it was quite tasty.  It was chewy like sourdough, had good sourdough flavor and the crumb was way better than any of my past sourdough attempts.  I think this qualified as a sourdough success.  Yea :)

I've been reading everything I can stumble upon regarding fougasse lately, to get an idea of the different recipes out there.  I've seen some different slit patterns and I think I'd like to try one of the recipes with no olives, but with cheese and lots of herbs.  That seems to be a popular way to do fougasse, besides the olive and anchovie option.

I feel bad that this bread didn't turn out so well for some of the others, but maybe it's worth another try, and if you're not an olive fan, just substitute some dried herbs and sprinkle on your favorite cheese and definitely try shaping it into the classical 'leafy' looking fougasse.

Potato Bread with Roasted Onions (Mellow Bakers: July)

I was really happy when I saw that for July we would be making a bread that revisited the roasted potato theme, one that I missed before I joined the group.  I figure I don't even have to go back and try the Roasted Potato Bread recipe, because this one is much better with roasted onions included.

I used the recommended Yukon gold potatoes for my potato and for the onion I chose to use a Vidalia.  I've been buying these at the farmer's market the past few weeks even though they are not grown local.  I figure they've got to be slightly fresher than the Vidalia's at the supermarket.  In case anyone's not familiar with these, they are a variety of sweet onion that is grown in a certain geographical production area defined by law in the state of Georgia.  Supposedly it is an unusually sweet variety of onion due to the low sulfur content of the soil in which it is grown in that part of Georgia.  Anyway they are super onions grilled, roasted whatever. 

I roasted my onions and potato the day before, as suggested.  I diced the potato up into maybe a half inch dice to roast and I sliced my onion thin to roast it.  After roasting they went into their own tupperware containers and sat in the fridge overnight and my pate fermentee sat on the counter overnight.

I was a little concerned about the water content of the onions the next morning, so I was skimpy on the water when adding it to the other ingredients, maybe leaving out a tablespoon or two.  The dough was stiff before adding the onions so I wasn't too worried at that point.  I think, on looking back now, that I should have put the onion on paper towels or something to try to absorb some of the excess moisture before putting them into the mixer bowl.  I did my kneading of all the other ingredients, and then put in the onions at the end to just incorporate.  Well, after adding the onion, the dough became a sloppy mess.  It wouldn't incorporate in the mixer even with adding a bit of flour.  I dumped the whole thing onto my silicone mat and painstakingly worked much more flour into the wet dough.  Ughh, it was a pain trying to work with the dough.  I finally quit adding more flour, because it seemed like a lot that I was adding.  I was hoping after fermentation that the dough would slurp up some of the excess moisture. 

After the 1 1/2 hours of bulk fermentation the dough seemed pretty slack and wasn't rising a whole lot so I folded it a second time and let it ferment an additional 30 minutes.

The dough was still pretty sticky, but I managed to shape it into a 1.5 lb boule and a mini-baguette.  I hadn't done the baguette shape in awhile and figured I better get some more practice.  The baguette shape sounds so simple and I can follow the pictures in the book, but it is so awkward to do when you actually go to do it yourself. 

Luckily, both the boule and baguette fit on my stone together.  I didn't get much oven spring from either loaf, but they looked pretty.  I took the baguette out of the oven after about 25 minutes and the boule after about 30 minutes.

The bread smelled up the house so wonderfully as it baked, especially the sweet onion scent.   Hubby was home early since they lost power at work and everyone was sent home.  After sitting upstairs the whole time it baked and smelling it, he began begging for some the minute I showed him the finished loaves.  I told him it must cool, and so he patiently waited a short time and then begged again.  I gave in and we tried a slice or two before dinner.  I quickly forgot my kneading/shaping frustrations, when I tried this bread.  It was soft, with a slightly chewy crust, and the sweetness from the onion permeated every bite.  It didn't even need butter; I just ate it plain.

We polished off the rest of the baguette for dinner with the Southwestern Chicken Black Bean Soup I made, and the leftover roasted potato got tossed into the soup, which made it even better.

We couldn't really see any of the onion or potato in the slices of the bread, maybe because I diced up the onion in small pieces before adding it to the dough, I'm not sure, but believe me you could taste the onion!

 This is such a wonderful bread that I know will get made again, especially during winter soup weather.  I am anxious to see how everyone else baking along with mellow bakers, does with this bread in July.

Pain Rustique (Mellow Bakers: June)

Yesterday morning was a little stressful, and I wondered at first if this bread would get made as planned for that day.  Tucker, my sous chef, was not feeling well at all.  He's not been that sick for awhile and, given his age, I was quite worried.  He was stable and more comfortable by 11 o'clock though, and so I went ahead with making my bread. 

Pain Rustique is first up on the list of breads for the Mellow Bakers in June.  I was really looking forward to this bread, as it seemed so similar to ciabatta, and we had loved the ciabatta that I made for the first time, back in February.   I decided to make two-thirds of Hamelman's Pain Rustique recipe from page 111, of his book, BREAD.  It's kind of nice to have one loaf to eat over a couple days and one to freeze to enjoy later.  Also, if I only made two loaves, I was hoping that both would fit on my pizza stone to bake at the same time.

The poolish for this bread was made the night before.  Since I was only making two-thirds of the recipe I had to do some calcumalatin' and at 9 o'clock at night, my little brain is tired.  I added my yeast to the water, dispersed it abit and then added my flour that I had weighed out.  Something didn't seem right as I stirred it all together and then I realized I hadn't used the correct amount of water for two-thirds of the recipe.  I measured out the extra water, dumped it over the rest and mixed it til smooth.  I covered it with plastic wrap and it sat out on the counter over night.

After making sure Tucker was OK, I made up the final dough the next day.  When the first 25 min. of bulk fermentation was up, I looked at the wet mass of dough in the bowl and since it seemed so much like the ciabatta dough that I had worked with in February,  I decided to follow the folding and shaping instructions that went with the America's Test Kitchen ciabatta recipe.

I sprayed my dough scraper with non-stick spray and gently lifted one side of the dough in the bowl and folded it over to the center.  I rotated the bowl 90° and did the same again.  I repeated this 6 more times, for a total of 8 folds.  After 50 minutes I repeated this procedure, being very gentle as I lifted the dough with the dough scraper and folded it to the center. 

Next, I lifted the dough onto my floured mat, and cut the dough into 2 pieces with my bench scraper.  I gently pressed each dough piece into a rough rectangle with my fingertips and then, folding it like a letter, I brought each of the two shorter sides into the middle.  I carefully flipped each piece of dough over and placed them on their own floured piece of parchment paper.  I covered and left them for another 25 minutes of final fermentation while the oven preheated. 

To bake I uncovered the two pieces of dough, pressed them out gently with my fingertips again to form a rough rectangle and then spritzed each dough piece with water.  I slid each piece of parchment onto my stone and spritzed each loaf again twice with water during the first 5 minutes of baking. 

The two loaves turned out beautifully.  I was really happy with the results.  Don't know if Hamelman would have approved, but my slight change in methodology resulted in nicely shaped, textured bread.  We enjoyed ours with soup last night and tonight we're having spaghetti and meatballs to finish the loaf with.

The bread was very similar to the ciabatta I made before, just the crust was a bit chewier and crunchy.    The ciabatta I made before was done with a bit of milk and so I think the interior of that bread was a little more tender.  We loved the Pain Rustique just as much as ciabatta, and I'm sure I'll be making this again.  It's kind of relaxing working with the wetter dough in that you don't worry about a perfect shaping of the final loaf. 

Here's another picture that shows the slices a little more up close,

Tucker was feeling alot better by dinner time and even though he was begging for a teeny bite of bread, we decided it was best not to let him have a taste this time :)

Five-Grain Bread with Pate Fermentee (Mellow Bakers: May)

At the beginning of the month I think I have all the time in the world to make the breads I want to do that month, and then before I know it, the 31st is upon me!  This is always a busy month for me as I'm sure it is for alot of others.  I plant my flowers and herbs and the end of May is always strawberry picking time, at least here in Central Kentucky. 

During the beginning of the month I was enjoying my new copy of PR's Artisan Breads Every Day, making one recipe after another.  It was interesting that the last bread I made before attempting Hamelman's Five Grain Bread on page 129, was Reinhart's Many Seed Bread from ABED.  Both breads were very good, but I think I'm kind of leaning towards enjoying Hamelman's Five Grain bread the best.

I made my pate fermentee and soaker the night before I planned to bake the Five-Grain bread.  I could not find any rye chops for the soaker, which was no surprise to me, since so many other people cannot find them.  I did buy some whole rye berries from Whole Foods though, and attempted to chop them in my coffee grinder.  It didn't really work too well.  I pulsed a couple times, sifted, pulsed a couple times, sifted (to get out the powdery stuff).  Each time I opened the coffee grinder a 'cloud' of rye dust billowed out and it was kind of messy.  Even after numerous pulses there were still quite a few whole rye berries, but I knew I couldn't keep grinding or I'd have mostly rye dust, so I just dumped the sifted 'chops' along with some whole berries into my soaker bowl.  Since there were some whole berries, I decided to use boiling water in my soaker just to make sure they were softened enough.  I left the sunflower seeds out of the soaker and toasted them in the oven.  (For PR's Many Seed bread the sunflower and pumpkin seeds are lightly toasted and it tasted really good that way.)

The next day before I started mixing, I picked a rye berry out of the soaker to put in my mouth to see if it was soft enough and it was, so I was pleased with that.  My pate fermentee was huge and had bubbles formed on the surface of it, which was quite cool.  No problems mixing, folding, or shaping.  I made four rolls for dinner and one loaf that was a little over 1.5 pounds.  I did have some problems scoring the large loaf and it showed in the end that my scoring was not very good this time, but that didn't matter, because the flavor of this bread made up for any other deficiencies.  I took this picture the next day after baking, in the morning sunlight so you could see the inside:

My husband just loves this bread and so do I.  I haven't made any PB&J's with it because it just doesn't seem like they go together, but we've been making turkey/provolone sandwiches with it all week.  The crust and interior of the loaf is soft, which is kind of nice that I don't have to fight with the bread to rip off a piece to eat.  It makes great toast too!  We'll definitely be making this one again.

Of course the camera said my hand was shaking, but here's another shot of just one slice with the morning sun behind it,

 Thank you for visiting my blog and I hope you'll give this bread a try!

Flaxseed Bread (Mellow Bakers: April)

I baked my first bread from the sourdough rye section of Hamelman's book Bread yesterday.  I'm now keeping a second, rye starter to go along with Lucky, and its name is Rudy.  I know, the name thing is kinda silly, but right now it seems fun to name them.  My husband loves to know what I'm doing at all times, and so now when he asks what I'm up to, I can reply, 'Oh, just feeding Rudy' and he'll be satisfied with my comprehensive answer and not ask any more questions.

On to the bread.  I made the flaxseed bread from page 211 in the book.  I cut the recipe in half, like alot of others did and just made one loaf.  The violet was looking so pretty yesterday, so I included it in the picture for added color.

For the sourdough that I mixed together the night before baking, I used a 100% hydration rye starter that I'd been feeding whole rye flour.  Since its been so warm in the house, in the upper 70's, he was quite perky all week and after each feeding it puffed up nicely and probably doubled.  It was so cool to look thru the bottom of the bowl and see the intricate network of air pockets.

The flax soaker was also prepared the night before, however I did contemplate just soaking the flax for a couple hours in the morning to avert any gooeyness issues.  Here's the soaker after I added it to the other ingredients.  It kind of oozed as one big glob into my mixer bowl.   Could that creepy blob be used to garnish some kind of Halloween dish?

I had some trouble with my dough coming together in the mixer.  It was so sticky that even though I kept adding flour, the dough hook just wouldn't grab the dough and bring it together.  I was worried about adding too much flour and/or mixing it too long in the mixer so I stopped the mixer after ~ 3 1/2 min. and finished kneading by hand.  The first bulk fermentaion was 40-45 minutes and then came the shaping.  Right after shaping, I rolled my boule onto a damp cloth and then rolled it onto a plate of sesame seeds.  I probably didn't use more than a Tbsp of seeds as I knew that most of the seeds would end up on the floor or the counter when I sliced the bread anyway. 

After the final fermentation of exactly 60 minutes, I uncovered my boule, which I'd covered with plastic wrap and..... bummer!!  The surface of the dough had started to kind of tear, or pull apart on top.  I should have taken a picture, but I just didn't think to do it at the time.  I scored the loaf, still puzzled by the ripping phenomenon, and slid the parchment and boule onto my baking stone. 

The baking went great, and the top looked pretty good, except just a little rough where the surface of the dough had torn a little during final fermentation.  I searched in the rest of the Bread book trying to figure out what caused the tearing and spent the rest of the afternoon online looking at The Fresh Loaf site and the Mellow bakers site, trying to find a cause.  I dunno???  I thought one of the other Mellow Bakers, with sourdough expertise, might know what happened.  Was I too rough in shaping?  Did I add too much extra flour?

I didn't cut into the loaf until today as instructed.  It had nice flavor, although I couldn't taste the golden flax seeds the way I can in a loaf I make where the seeds are all ground before going into the dough.  It definitely had a nice tang to it and the crumb was not too chewy, not too soft, but just right for my turkey sandwich. 

Take a look at Joanna's post of her flaxseed sourdough rye at Zeb Bakes.  She has some wonderful pictures of the whole mixing/shaping/baking process that bring everything to life.

Thank you for visiting my blog!

Hamelman's Hot Cross Buns

It was about a month and a half ago when I saw some Hot Cross Buns w/ Dried Strawberry and Candied Orange for sale at Panera Bread and I was intrigued.  I had never heard of hot cross buns before.  I began looking up recipes online and then discovered via The Fresh Loaf that Hamelman had a recipe for these in his book Bread.  Well, that settled it for me, I was going to try Hamelman's version of these.  I saw just this morning that the Mellow Bakers group baked these together back in March 2010, as their very first assignment together, so I'm just a tad late, but I'm glad I made these so that now I know what hot cross buns taste like!  Here are my hot cross buns I made yesterday:

Unfortunately, I hadn't read any of the Mellow Bakers' posts on these buns before I began my project, so I experienced most of the same problems.  The recipe for the paste in the book makes way to much for piping crosses on 12 buns.  My crosses were probably a little thinner in diameter than Hamelman intended, but still I had more than half of the paste left over.  I too, had trouble piping these crosses.  The paste was thick and my poor hands were shot after piping all 12 crosses.  The paste also would not come off the pastry tip at the end of each cross strip I piped; it clung to the tip and I had to take my finger and pull it off the tip.  Also, the recipe for the simple syrup makes way to much syrup for 12 buns.  I did decide to cut the recipe back on this, and made only a quarter of the syrup recipe.

The other fun part of this project came from the experience of making my very own candied orange peel.  I followed this recipe for the candied orange peel.  I had never tasted candied orange peel before and thought it was quite good when I tasted it.  My husband said it tasted like the candy orange slices you can buy.  I have some slices left over, so their going to be dipped in dark chocolate this week for a little treat!
Here are my orange slices drying after their long simmer.

I'm so glad I tried these buns as they were quite fun to make despite the little difficulties and they tasted way better than plain old dinner rolls.  They were very fruity, incredibly moist and just a little spicy from all the fresh ground allspice that went into the dough. 

The only change I would make is that next time I will pipe on my crosses after the buns bake and just use powdered sugar, milk, a tad of vanilla and a drop or two of Fiori Di Sicilia.  I think the buns have much better visual appeal with a white cross on top. 

Hazelnut and Fig Bread w/ Fennel & Rosemary (Mellow Bakers: April)

Finally, I did a Mellow Bakers April bread yesterday.  I had wanted to try the Pain au Levain sourdough first, but I don't think my stiff starter was vigorous enough to raise a 1 1/2 lb piece of dough, but I might try it later.

The hazelnut and fig bread was the April bread that I was really looking forward to.  My first task was to decide what kind of figs to use.  Well, that shouldn't be hard, given that there are only over 700 varieties of figs.   I finally settled on a package of Sun-Maid California Mission figs, since they were on sale, and I thought they might be fresher/moister having been sealed in a bag.  The figs at Whole Foods in the bulk bins looked very dry and almost crusty.  Early yesterday I gathered my four main ingredients which Hamelman says make this bread 'loaded'.  They were fennel seed, rosemary, roasted hazelnuts, and my figs:

Its funny how just the other day I was reading on the mellow bakers site where someone said that the HOME column is prone to error.  Well, I think I found one as I was adding all my ingredients (except the hazelnuts and figs) to my stand mixer bowl.  The 2 1/4 cups of water given in the HOME column is incorrect.   I knew right away, after adding 1 1/8 cups of water for half the recipe, to the other ingredients, that there was not enough water.  I adjusted by adding more though and everything was fine, but I will probably double check the HOME column from now on before starting a recipe.

My dough did not exactly seem moderately loose as I did my mixing on first speed.  In fact all the way through the kneading, my dough seemed very, very stiff, but I just kept going.  I added my figs and hazelnuts after the ~ 3 minutes of kneading.  The figs I quartered and the hazelnuts I chopped a bit before adding them in.  I turned the mixer to low speed, waiting for these additions to get incorporated, but it just wasn't happening  in the mixer.  I stopped the mixer, and lifted the dough, along with all the nuts and figs at the bottom of the bowl, out onto my silicone mat.  After much difficulty in kneading the dough, I was finally satisfied that everything was OK, even though the occasional nut kept popping out and figs insisted on poking themselves through the surface of the dough.  The dough went through its bulk and final fermentations and it was ready to be scored and tossed in the oven.  I finally found some razor blades, thanks to Abby at Stir it! Scrape it! Mix it! Bake it!., who told me where to look.  I was anxious to try scoring this loaf with the razor blade, as I had done quite a poor job of it on a loaf of Vermont Sourdough a couple weeks back.

Everything worked beautifully!!  No problems scoring and I steamed the oven diligently, squirting the walls of the oven at least 4 or 5 times during the first 10-15 minutes of baking.  I raised the oven rack up one notch that my stone sits on, since previous breads were baking too quickly and browning a bit much on the bottom.  This time my loaf finished in 36 minutes and was beautiful and smelled heavenly.  The scoring opened up nicely (I think), and I didn't have any unusual blowouts from the bottom side.  The bottom was perfectly flat and not too browned.  Oh, so nice:

Hubby and I haven't discussed whether we liked this loaf better than the whole wheat w/ hazelnuts and currants made in February, but I'm guessing it is a close tie.  This loaf is definitely loaded with lotsa flavor!!! 

Thank you for visiting my blog this time around and stop by Living in the Kitchen with Puppies to see the lovely Fig and Walnut buns that Natashya made from the same recipe!

Whole-Wheat Multigrain (Mellow Bakers: March)

Determined to strengthen and give Lucky (my sourdough culture) more practice, I wanted to try one more of the mellow bakers March breads before March ended.  The very next recipe in Hamelman's Bread, on page 169, is the recipe for Whole-Wheat Multigrain.  One of my husband's favorite breads is Peter Reinhart's, Multigrain Bread Extraordinaire from Bread Baker's Apprentice, so this Hamelman recipe looked promising.

I cut the recipe in half this time and the night before the bake, I prepared my liquid levain build with 1 1/2 Tbsp of culture, 1.9 oz of bread flour and 2.4 oz of water.  At the same time I also made the soaker.  Hamleman doesn't tell exactly what grains to use, but gives the weight as 2.9 oz or 82 g for half the recipe.  I chose to use 20 g of cracked wheat, 42 g of rolled oats, and 20 g of coarse cornmeal (Bob's Red Mill Corn Grits).  I like to use the coarse cornmeal in breads because of the teeny golden nuggets deposited throughout the crumb, and the subtle sweetness it lends to the bread.  Since I used the cracked wheat (a harder grain), I used boiling water to cover the grains as opposed to room temp water.

After ~ 14 1/2 hours my liquid levain appeared to be ready.  Definitely showed more signs of activity than the levain from last week.  These looked like the tiny soap bubbles, described by Hamelman, that should cover most of the surface:

and my soaker was ready to go

I added all of the ingredients to my mixing bowl, remembering to put 1 1/2 Tbps of the levain back into my original sourdough culture, and mixed on first speed for 3 minutes.  I added at least several more tablespoons of water to the dough as it seemed dry and the dough kept soaking it up.  I finally stopped though, and called it good.  I mixed the dough on second speed maybe 4 minutes.  I had to keep stopping the mixer to push the dough down off the hook, so it's kind of hard to keep track of the actual mixing time when doing that. 

As usual my sous chef, Tucker, was plopped on the rug right behind me in case he was needed for tasting or to catch some stray bit of ingredient that happened to fall his way.

I put my dough into a lightly greased bowl, covered it with plastic wrap and off to the store I went in search of a sharp tomato knife or a straight razor blade.  I was back in an hour to fold the dough.  I figured since the house was cool (outside temps back into the mid 40's) another hour of fermentation would be beneficial.

I shaped the dough into a batard, thinking I might use this bread for sandwiches and here it is ready to go into the oven:













Once again, I wasn't happy with how the scoring went.  I imagine this is an area that baker's struggle with all the time, trying to get this right.  I was only able to find an inexpensive tomato knife at the store, and as I didn't think it was very sharp, its going to be returned.  I wish I could find just a plain old-fashioned straight razor blade, but henceforth my search hasn't turned one up.

I had no gaping holes open up from the bottom of the loaf and my interior crumb structure didn't look too bad this time.  There's an occasional "bite" from a bit of cracked wheat in the bread, you can see golden cornmeal flecks in the slices and it tastes smooth and tangy.

Overall I was very pleased with my second attempt at sourdough bread.  Hopefully warmer weather will be back soon and April will bring lots more bread!!!

Thank you for visiting my blog this time 'round and stop by Mellow Bakers to see what others have made!