I've been out of town some lately, but really wanted to post the pictures of my Guinness Walnut Loaf which is a recipe that I got from Qahtan here:

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/1649/walnut-levain

It turned out to be delicious and perfectly timed since I just read a NY Times article touting the health benefits of walnuts here:

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/02/walnuts-the-original-health-nut/?scp=1&sq=walnuts&st=cse

There are some yummy looking recipes in that article as well.

About the baking: One change that I made is that I retarded the dough overnight and should have reduced the yeast since the centers of the loaves dried out a little about a day after cutting into them.

I left the walnut halves on the top of the loaf whole.

Try this recipe for a simple but satisfying and healthy loaf!

Summer

Hi, there!

I've been watching all this great content about bread making and have long wanted to participate in the discussions. I have been interested in baking bread for a long time and had taken some commercial bread making classes back in the Philippines, as well as some personal lessons from my old aunt who is a nun. It has best remained as a hobby for me till I got to Singapore where I wet my feet again. The Fresh Loaf site is quite inspiring and I have shared your site with some of my officemates. And yes, they get surprised that a guy like me is into baking.

Artisan flours are a bit hard to come by here except for some Gold Medal and Bob's Red Mill varieties and an occasional Waitrose strong bread flour from Down Under. The locally-milled flours do not perform as well specially with the extremely hot weather here.  

I've been trying out recipes from Reinhart, Bertinet and Berenbaum. Here are a few of my recent attempts - Bertinet's Guinness Loaf (w/o the Aniseed), Berenbaum's Flaxseed and White Sandwich Bread. I hope you enjoy these photos.

Cheers

Last week's experiment with Doppelbock came out so well that I decided to graduate to Porter, which my friend's website (http://www.lightningbrewery.com/) describes as having, "intensely rich malt aromas with strong notes of chocolate and coffee," the result of his using 9 different malts and a generous portion of hops. This is beer that you can almost chew.