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My wife made pumpkin bars this weekend, and she told me to use up the rest of the puree.  So...  New bread experiment time!

I used the recipe from wassisname as a starting point: https://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/35177/pumpkin-sourdough

I didn't have any pumpkin seeds handy, so I went with raisins instead and added a little cinnamon and nutmeg.  Recipe below is for two loaves.

My raisin YW using date syrup as part of the refresh has been working very well and didn't disappoint this time either.  I have been combining YW and SD in the levain prep quite a bit this summer with good results.  The YW and mother culture are straight from the refrigerator.  I am seeing a lot of carbon dioxide evolution when I mix the acidic starter with the YW.  The drop in pH causes the dissolved gas to come out of solution.  You can see the layer of carbon dioxide foam just after mixing.  The levain was allowed to ferment at 73-74 deg F for 11 hours.  It over doubled in volume.

Raisins were put in the puree and refrigerated overnight to re-hydrate.  Cinnamon and nutmeg added to that as well.  Combined puree with final mix water in the morning and then combined that with the levain before adding in flour.  Dough came together nicely and was not sticky.  5 sets of bowl kneading after autolyse to develop gluten (roughly 60 mins to complete from end of autolyse) and then into the proofing box at 76 deg F.

Dough increased roughly 75% in bulk and then divide and pre-shape.  Shaped in a boule after bench rest and then back into proofing box at 76 deg F.  Moved to Cold Retard after 75 mins because I had to make lunch.  In cold retard for approximately 3 hours.  Pre-heat oven to 450 deg F for 1 hour.  Misted both doughs with water and scored delicately to try and get that "pumpkin" look after oven spring (this is part of where I went wrong but more on that in a minute).  Doughs into my Granite Ware roaster and a few more squirts of water to help with moisture.  450 deg with lid on and 425 deg with if off.  Final internal temp at 205 deg and nothing sticking to probe when removed. 

Not frisbees but didn't really have any spring/bloom, which surprised me based on how well bulk and final proof went.

When I removed the doughs from cold retard, I noticed both had large openings in the seam at the center of the dough.  Neither were there when I put them in the banneton.  I checked because I've had a few boules do that too me lately when I tried to proof them seam side down for a natural bloom.  I wasn't too worried about it because both of these would be seam side down for the bake.  However, when I sliced the loaf, I think I see why that decision, combined with the light scoring, killed any oven spring.  It looks like all my gases went down instead of trying to go up through the scoring.  Lesson learned!  I do need to figure out what I'm doing wrong with my boule shaping though...  Didn't get pictures of the second loaf as I gave it to a friend, but it had the same hole in the center after final proof and the same profile and lack of spring after baking.

Flavor and texture on the bread were very nice.  Loaf was quite heavy, and it probably could have baked another 5-10 minutes.  Toasted it with some butter and raspberry jam.  Good stuff!

Am still loving the yeast water! This was a repeat of Hamelman's "Swiss Farmhouse" from the community bake - used the same formula but with some minor tweaks. Said tweaks being that I used apple yeast water (fed using Granny Smith apples, originally started as a raisin yeast water); and replaced the raisins and walnuts by cranberries and pecans; the cranberries were soaked in boiled water for 20 minutes and so were slightly more hydrated than the raisins usually are.

The interesting thing about using the apple yeast water this time is that build 1 and build 2 both had some lovely apple odours to them, but as usual with the yeast waters I can't taste it in the final bread.

The bread flour that I used ("Champagne Valley") needed fairly long in the mixer before the mixer ran clean. It ended up needing 20 minutes before I was satisfied, and perhaps next time I use this brand of flour I'll try it with an autolyse beforehand as that felt like a long time. But, the long mix gave a nicely developed gluten, and I've never had the experience of slicing into a bread and thinking the interior looked like the interior of a croissant until this one.

To be fair "work meetings" meant I was distracted, so perhaps I let the fermentation run longer than usual too, but that isn't such a bad thing now, is it? So this bread had 2 hours of bulk fermentation before shaping without any coil folds, followed by 2 hours of final proof before it was baked without a cold retard. The aliquot jar at the time of baking showed a volume increase of about 225%, think this is a first for me without over proofing!

It's been a busy summer and haven't had time to post much.  Have still been baking though.  Have tried a number of different breads, but I keep coming back to my stand-by.  Buckwheat and oat.  

I've done numerous variants, but this is one of my favorites.  I think the maple and toasted buckwheat make a nice combination.

This recipe uses only yeast water but could also be done with a poolish using ADY.  Each variant I make follows the same basic method.  Because this dough spreads so easily, I score it with long diagonals leaving a large strap intact to hold the sides together. 

Crumb shot tomorrow.

Hope everyone had a great summer and look forward to reading your posts as summer winds down and I get some time to post again!

EDIT: Crumb added…