I have never been a big fan of pears. I eat only a few per year. But when I saw those I decided to buy a few. They were delicious. Their beauty inspired me to bake this bread.

Soaker:
453 g water

283g whole rye flour-stone ground 453 whole wheat flour

 Mix the flours and water until the dough comes together and you have a sticky mass and put the container in the refrigerator for 12 hours  Starter: 125 g water 125 g whole rye flour 25 g whole rye starter
Final dough: all soaker from refrigerator 255 g starter Mix the ingredients (it's not easy) and let rest 30 minutes.
Add salt work it through the dough. Let rest 30 minutes. Fold the dough and let rest 30 minutes. Repeat the procedure once more.
Allow the dough to ferment for 4 hours at room temperature.

Shaping:
Flatten the dough into a disc, put 100 g of pistachio nuts (toasted, salted) and pear cut in to pieces. Fold in each side, and then the bottom. . Turn the dough over and shape your pear. Try to shape thick neck to prevent from burning during baking. Use XL raisin or dried plum to make stem end of the pear. Place the pear on peel with parchment . Cover with plastic to avoid drying the dough. After 3-hour proofing preheat the oven to 500F with a.baking stone. Prepare 1 cup of  hot water for steaming.Score the loaf.
Bake:
15 minutes-480 F
15 minutes -450F
Remove  the parchment, cover the bread with foil (it's brown enough) and bake 10 minutes in 400F.


 Adapted from the recipe from: Discovering Sourdough and inspired by http://www.wildyeastblog.com/2010/01/31/pear-buckwheat-bread/

 

As you probably know, there's a technique for improving bread which involves adding some quantity of "old dough" to the new dough. Some dough from the last batch, that's 6 or 12 or 4 hours old, or something. While this is great for commercial bakers, it's a little bit less great for the home baker. Here's what I've started doing:

Whenever I bake a yeasted more-or-less white bread, I save a 2 or 3 walnut sized balls of fully developed dough (just before shaping). I wrap these individually in a piece of plastic wrap suitable to cover my normal mixing bowl, and freeze them. Then, when I want to do some pate fermente action, I thaw a ball out the night before. I soak this dough in 1/4 cup or so of warm water to soften it up, and then mix in anough flour for a stiff dough (2/3 cup to 3/4 cup). Knead enough to mix the thawed old throughout. Cover the bowl with the plastic wrap (which you can now use to cover the bowl for the entire batch of bread, see?) and let stand overnight.

If you want more "old dough" you can repeat the process, adding more water to your risen dough, and more flour, and let that rise.

You could do the same thing with yeast and so on, to make a new dough the night before, but I find this to be very convenient.