This week our bread to have with soup at lunch time will be olive bread.  I've been wanting to try this bread again from the Il Fornaio Baking Book by Franco Galli for quite sometime.  I made two changes to the recipe as given.  I used 1/4 cup of my 70% hydration whole wheat sourdough starter instead of the 1/4 cup biga.  I also used kalamata olives instead of green olives as my husband doesn't really care for the green olives. 

The loaf had good oven spring, so I am hopeful that I might even have an open crumb in this bread, which would be a first for me.  We shall see tomorrow when we cut into the loaf. 

I decided to return to my roots as it were, and reprise an old standard bread
recipe from the Tassajara Bread Book, Whole Wheat Bread. I topped the loaf with
a little egg wash and some sesame seeds before baking.  It's not 100% whole wheat but about 70% whole wheat - (2 1/2 cups ww flour, 1 cup all-purpose flour). I used to make this bread every week for
morning toast. After seeing and smelling it, I remember why - it's just good.

My husband requested some seeded sourdough loaves to go with our soup this week.  I was happy to find the 'Seedy Whole Wheaty Sourdough' recipe on this site and set out to fulfill the order. 

The dough I made could have stood a little more gluten development. I think and I should have done a full 12 hour ferment for the sourdough build instead of 6.  I'm also working on better scoring of the loaves before baking. Thanks for the recipe!