This one isn't very seasonal at the moment, but I love eating it for breakfast. It's so buttery and soft that I really don't think it needs an accompaniment. The recipe is taken from "non solo zucchero vol.II" where it is called pandoro evolution, but it is very similar to the pandoro a sfoglia from Cresci. 

Main impasto - in grams

sweet starter (50% humidity) 45

dry active yeast 3

very strong flour 179

sugar 36

unsalted butter (soft but not melted) 27

egg 107

salt 3.5

half a vanilla pod 

melted butter flavour 0.3 (I've made this before without the flavouring and it tasted exactly the same - but it's in the recipe so I've included it here).

mix all the ingredients together and work it until it forms a smooth, elastic dough. It should be strong and windowpane, but still very slightly sticky. Wrap it in plastic and put it in the freezer. I left it in there for an about an hour, but the book actually recommends overnight at -10C. While this is firming up, I worked on the butter for lamination:

softened unsalted butter 147

icing sugar 39 

mix the two ingredients together thoroughly, then pat into a square, wrap, and put in the fridge to firm up. When both parts are at the right consistency, take 362 of the dough and laminate it as if you were making croissants - 3 simple turns in total, with at least half an hour between each turn. It ought to look something like this when you've finished:

the total weight is 550g.

The difficult bit is then forming this into a ball without breaking the laminations. The book gives absolutely no guidance here whatsoever! I usually fold the ends underneath and then roll it around until it looks more or less spherical. I doubt very much that this is the best method! The dough by this point is really quite resistant to being shaped. 

It looks so tiny in the tin - it's hard to believe that it can possibly fill it!

Leave it to prove at about 27C and at least 60% humidity for about 10 - 12 hours. I left mine for 10 hours. 

I think it could easily have grown even more than this, so next time I might put less dough in the pandoro tin. As it was, it was just about to start spilling over the edge. If my shaping of the ball had been better then I also think this might have helped.

Leave it in the open air for about 30 minutes in order to form a skin on the dough and then it goes in the oven for 30 minutes at 170C. Leave it in the tin for a few hours after cooking before turning out. Mine stuck a little bit - I should have used more flour and butter to grease the form. 

When it's ready to eat (after a few days), dust it in icing sugar and enjoy! 

I was very happy with the crumb on this one - really light and shreddy, with a wonderfully complex buttery taste. It just fell to pieces as I was cutting and eating it. 

David

Compagne is another bread I am recently into...

I just feel so happy when those coupes opened up nicely!!

This is round campagne, and I sprinkled mealy graham flour on the outside.

They gave extra crunchy texture and savory flavor to the crust which I really enjoy.

Here is the oval one!  I like this shot because it looks like A big smile!!  :)

For this oval one I've tried to make it little softer crumb...

whith some cheddar cheese!!

Had a request from my wifes co-workers for some treats so I made some coffee cake with blueberry and and lemon zest.

Cheers,

Wingnut

It has been almost a year since I last baked this bread. (See Three-Stage 80% Sourdough Rye Bread from Hamelman's "Bread" for the formula and method.) It is very similar to the 70% rye in Bread and to "Hansjoakim's Favorite 70% Rye," both of which are delicious. I do believe that this bread, which uses the "3-stage Detmolder" technique for elaborating the rye sour, yields a slightly better flavor than any other high-percentage rye breads I have baked. The Brød and Taylor Proofing Box makes the necessary temperature control easy. 

I slightly over-proofed this loaf. By time I transferred it to the peel for loading, some of the dough stuck to the bottom of the brotform. The dough had a consistancy reminiscent of chocolate mouse. For fear it would stick to the peel, even with a heavy dusting of semolina, I transferred it to parchment paper. Miraculously, the loaf kept it's shape. It didn't have much oven spring, but it didn't collapse. I baked this 1800 g loaf at 490 dF for 10 minutes, the first 5 with steam. I then lowered the temperature to 410 dF and baked for another 60 minutes. This resulted in a darker crust than my previous bake and a better crust consistancy and flavor, to my taste. While the profile was lower than my previous bake, the end result was more than satisfactory.

After cooling for 4 hours, I wrapped the loaf in baker's linen and let it cure for about 40 hours before slicing it.

The crust was chewy and the crumb was tender and almost creamy. The flavor was sweet and earthy with the barest sour tang. It was just delicious plain and with a thin spread of sweet butter. I'm hoping I can get some cold smoked salmon to go with this tomorrow, if not, it's pretty darned good with pickled herring too.

I know the recipes for 3-stage Detmolder rye breads look rather formidable on first reading, but they are really not too demanding, if you plan the schedule of rye sour elaborations to fit other demands and you can get comfortable handling high-percentage rye doughs. (Shaping with a wet board and wet hands is highly recommended!) The results are certainly worth the challenge. If you asked for a few examples of "real bread" - the antithesis of supermarket, cotton wool, pre-sliced, packaged in plastic white bread - this would certainly be among them.

Happy baking!

David

After seeing Karin’s (Hanseata) great post with her take on Maria Speck’s  Aroma Bread here:  http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/32830/aroma-bread-love-story

We knew that we would have to move it to the top of the baking list before anything else got baked.  My apprentice immediately knew this was her kind of bread – 100% whole grains, soakers for a majority of the flours, includes the oddball cornmeal and some Toadies, a scald for the whole berries, seeds galore with multi-versions of SD starters and commercial yeast.

We, of course, decided to go all with the seeds getting around to 11 different ones not including the 3 whole grain seed soaker (making a total of 14).  Some seeds like the coriander, anise, brown and black caraway and fennel were aromatics to spice the bread.

Other seeds like; cracked brown and golden flax, black and white sesame, pumpkin and sunflower seeds make the bread healthy and meaty when combined with the spelt, whole wheat, and rye scalded whole berries.

We strayed from Karin’s bake in some minor ways.  We used the berry soaker water for much of the liquid,  had a few more and different seeds here and there.  We added our new very vigorous WW starter in place of rye sour one Karin used and used a poolish in place of the commercial yeast.  We added WW to the scald, tossed in some toadies and VWG since these flours have so little and also used more rye in place of some of the spelt. 

We did 10 minutes of slap and folds after everything except the sesds and scald came together to work up the gluten and then did (4) S&F’s on 15 minute increments ,to incorporated the seeds and scald.  After 1 hour of fermentation on the counter we bulk retarded the dough for 8 hours in the fridge.

After warming up again on the counter for 1 1/2 hours the next morning and using the time to soak the clay baker, we shaped the loaf to fit an oval  Romertopf and let it proof for 2 hours until it more than doubled.  You might want to let yours be slightly under double so you get the oven spring we didn’t get.  Well, at least it didn’t collapse.

We warmed the oven to 450 F with a stone below and above the rack that the cold clay baker would do its thing on.  We covered the top of the loaf with our tri colored, poppy seeds for a final touch, covered with the lid and steamed the bread for 25 minutes,  We then removed the lid, turned down the temperature to 425 F convection and let it bake another 20 minutes rotating the Romertopf every 5 minutes.

At the 45 minute mark the bread hit 200 F and we turned off the oven, leaving the bread inside, until it hit 205 F - 5 minutes later, when we removed the bread to a cooling rack.  It was very aromatic, boldly brown., crispy but not sporting a blistered crust.

We can already tell that we will love this bread and will know for sure as soon as we can cut into it and give it a taste.  It has another top 5 rating hanging over it I’m guessing.  As a side note we have another nearly identical bake planned with the exception that; we will bake it like a pumpernickel to see which one we like better and it will have yeast water  and Rye Sour levain in place of the WW SD and poolish used for this bake.

I can't stop eating this bread.  Plain or toasted with butter  - just fantastic.  We love the deep flavor, the aroma of the toasted spice seeds,  the nuttiness of the toasted more meaty seeds that give the soft crumb its chew.  This is a great bread adn one i am so glad that Karin posted.  It''s different  than her Wild Rice Bread and, to my liking, a tad better and I love the Wild Rice Bread.  It would be very difficult to craft a healthier bread too.  Can't wait to have a sandwich made with it tomorrow for lunch.  This bread is why I bake and put up with my apprentice....You have to try it.

She's a tuckered doggie just waiting for the sunset.

Couldn't wait for lunch.  We had to have tomorrow's lunch tonight for dinner - a wise choice !

Formula

We ran out of whole wheat sandwich bread and there is only a crust of sourdough left.  Yikes!  Time to start baking.  Actually I started the San Francisco sourdough three days ago per David Snyder's formula, a very reliable go-to loaf of tangy goodness.  Those were baked first. 

Yesterday I also put together a wild yeast starter and soaker for the Peter Reinhart 100% whole wheat sandwich loaf from Whole Grain Breads (I'm really enjoying this book, got it for my Kindle now too).  That loaf was baked next and almost had a disaster, but hopefully caught it in time.  I was merrily going along doing other things when I happened to look at the oven temp reading and realized I hadn't reset the oven to 35oF from 425F per the recipe.  Uh-oh the bread spent 25 minutes in the oven at 425F.  I quickly turned the oven down and tented the loaf with aluminum foil, baked it another 10-11 minutes and took it out of the pan to give it a look/see thump.  It was done.  It looks none the worse for wear. 

Today's bakes (one SF SD went to work with my husband) -

Hey TFLers!  

I'm still getting over the jet lag, but I'm back from Poland.  As all of you in the UK know, March was unusually cold over there this year, so we saw a lot more snow and a lot fewer flowers than we expected. Still, we had a great trip.  

More to come! I'm thinking one (short) post in the next couple of days about travelling in Poland, another focused on the food there.  After that, I'm hoping to pick up the site migration/upgrade before my workload gets too heavy and maybe get us switched over by mid-month.  That may be too optimistic... we'll see.

Also, I thought I'd share a picture my first loaves since returning.  I just pulled these out of the oven:

These were using my sourdough starter, which rose like nuts! It was like an eager puppy that hasn't been played with for a couple of weeks. I didn't expect to be able to bake until this evening, but here there are.

What I saw of everyone's Easter baking looked great, BTW.    

Also, I need to update the homepage features.  Any recent posts folks want to highlight?  I'm trying to catch up on everything, but I've missed quite a bit, so let me know if there have been any particularly juicy ones.

Cheers,

-Floyd

I've been taking advantage of a flexible work schedule to set aside a chunk of time each week for my own "bread-ucation". Wanted to share a picture from one of the recent bake days; I was pretty happy with the results. Enjoy!

-Todd