Though I'm sure I'll be lured away once again by the delights of a good poolish, I'm back to baking whole grains.

Below is a photo of my third attempt at home milling and sifting, which resulted in a flour very similar to my favorite "high extraction flour", Heartland Mills Golden Buffalo flour. The processes used on my second and third tries are explained further below. Additional photos of the process have been posted.

My home sifting project resulted in "middlings", a term I may be using incorrectly. What I mean by middlings is the stuff I sifted out that is finer than bran but was coarser and darker than I wanted for the flour being produced.

I've decided to make Peter Reinhart's whole wheat focaccia from his new WGB. Of course I had to make a few changes. I omitted the sweetener and the olive oil in the dough. I used a minimal amount of olive oil to shape the focaccia (less than a teaspoon), and I added some rosemary on top of the focaccia (I like rosemary). Here is a shot of the focaccia after it had cooled and I cut it. I am very happy with it.

This picture is from a 100% whole wheat, rather high hydration dough. It had been kneaded for about 20 minutes at speed 2 in a Delonghi/Kenwood mixer. The lighting isn't that great, but if you look at the base of the left thumb, you'll see a fingertip behind the dough. The browner areas are simply dough that has not been stretched. This started as a piece of dough about the size of a golf ball And yes, it made nice bread - in this case a light sandwich loaf.

I was concerned that my success with the whole grain hearth bread that I posted about early last month was just a one-hit wonder. Thankfully, it seems I can repeat it. Here's a few loaves that have come out of the oven in the past weeks:

So today i started a double batch variant of a multigrain hearth bread in the PR delayed fermentation/epoxy style. I decided to add 12ozs of cooked brown rice, quinoa, and amaranth grains for extra protein; i've also found that the quinoa sometimes gives a pleasant little *pop* if you happen to catch a grain between your teeth while eating the bread. It's "retarding" now; meaning I got lazy, and didn't want to bake it tonight so i left the bowl in the cold basement to do its thing.

The 2nd time's a charm!

Partially Proofed Rolls - they started out 1/2 inch apart.

A few extras. These are baked in a 6 1/2" x 10 1/4" sheet.

Interior Crumb