Hello all,

Most of you will not recognize my username, since I last posted here in March of 2008.  But I've been reading TFL daily for years now, since I first searched online for a good pretzel recipe, and found this one.  The combination of TFL, BBA, and Glezer's Artisan Baking Across America got me to the point where I could bake bread that I was proud of.

This evening, I pulled two loaves of Thom Leonard's Country French bread out of the oven, and they looked like this (shouldn't I have brushed off that little speck of flour on the near loaf?):

But when I first posted about this bread, I was disappointed (see blog entry here).  I goobered up some of the process, and thought the crumb was not what it should be, etc.  Back then, I sweated every line of instruction, every minute that some step of the process went too long, and was almost afraid to handle the dough for shaping.  Tonight, I called in a take-out order from a local pizza joint, loaded the bread in the oven, went to pick up dinner, got back home with 45 seconds to spare till I had to rotate the loaves.  Hey, just another day in the kitchen!

After all these years, and many dozens of loaves of all kinds of breads, it has become relatively easy to produce really nice stuff.  But as soon as I typed that, I remembered that a few weeks ago, I attempted the Polish Cottage Rye from Leader's Local Breads.  It had a cavern big enough for half the bakers on TFL, and a gummy crumb.  Yecch.  But usually, I'm quite happy with my results.

I just wanted to post this to encourage all you newbies to keep at it.  Find a bread you're interested in, and make it many times till you'd be glad to give it as a gift.  There's so much common sense and wisdom on this site, you can find any information you need.  And really, an investment of time will definitely yield a satisfying reward!

Happy Baking,

Sue

On X-mas we'll be having a cheese-thingie going on with friends, so I made my first 4 pounder today. It looks quite spectacular I think:

This dough is quite soft, and I forgot to fold it 3x early on in the ferment, so i did one fold and at the end of the 3 hour ferment and hoped for the best. It came out flatter than I wanted, but it did get a substantial oven spring, so I'm  happy.

I made sure that the time between the dough leaving the rising basket (well, more like a bucket in this case, lol) and it going into the oven was minimal, but the dough is so heavy, there's just no keeping it from loosing its shape.

I haven't tasted it yet, it's still cooling. I'll post a pic of the crumb after we cut it at the dinner table

I made a "year in baking"- slideshow; if you would like to see: here it is

greettings from Amsterdam

Freerk

This weekend I made Thom Leonard's Country French bread, as written in Glezer's Artisan Baking.  

I absolutely LOVED making the dough, it had great gluten development, as you can see in the first photo.   However, I took a huge lesson in humility and the dough almost brought me to my knees - no wonder it is listed as "advanced". 

anyway, it has to rise for 4 hours after shaping - being a huge loaf, I did not have a suitable banetton, but used a pasta colander instead.. With a linen HEAVILY floured.   I turned the dough out onto parchment paper to bake it, and when I tried to pull the linen out, it was GLUED to the dough in several places.   It was like Nightmare on Elm Street, except that my street has a different name.  

As I am pulling the linen out (and using quite a bit of profanity in the process), the dough is deflating right in front of my eyes, and turning from a nice, tight round, into a flying saucer shape, threatening to expand out of the parchment.

I had to rush it into the oven, no way to bake with steam as my original idea was to inverted my roasting pan on top of it, but then it spread so much it would not fit.  

I had zero hope for the bread, but amazingly enough, the crumb was still airy and the taste amazing. (I took a very careful picture, not showing the completely messed up top of the loaf... :-)

My question for your guys: what is the best way to approach a loaf of this size?  (Please, don't tell me to go buy a huge banetton....)   

Is there anything I could have done to help remove the linen without harming the dough?   Would it help start baking it with the linen on and pull it a few minutes later?

I'd like to try making the Thom Leonard Country French bread again and I remember brotkunst posted using clear flour. Was there ever a full recipe posted or has anyone else tried using the clear flour in this recipe? If so, what part of the flour in the recipe was replaced.

I've been real busy the past few weeks so have not been online much, but did make time to bake each weekend.