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Is this from not having a tight enough ball?  I tried to get it tighter but it was very sticky.  I will try this again.  waiting for that 12-14 hour preferment was so hard!  I went for the 12 since my kitchen is 75 degrees.  

In addition to my recent foray into selling at the farmers market, I have also been doing a small bake to order business out of my house.   I post a few choices for one day a week, and people order a couple days in advance.   Then stop by and pick up.   This is very constrained as zoning regs say that only 6 people per day can come to the house to purchase.   It would take a neighbor complaint to make enforcement kick in, but obviously it could only grow so much.  

I started with a few friends, and then a few people who became friends, plus a few friends of friends.   A couple people order almost every week and have done so for months, and then several more people order regularly but less frequently.  

A woman I know who gets things done decided to hold a bread tasting for me - in other words she hosts and invites her friends, and I bake.    That's next week, so we'll see what comes of that.  

Picture above was taken just after the last bagel came out of the oven, but unfortunately after the first customer came and walked off with a few bagels and a baguette. 

We had a good crop of jalapeno peppers growing, so I thought I would look for a good recipe to use some of them and my sourdough starter.  I found the recipe below, and I really liked it.  I learned some things along the way that I would do differently next time, but my husband really enjoyed it.  We made tilapia piccata, grilled asparagus, and tomato/basil salad with smoked mozzarella to go along with the bread.  It was really delicious.  We ate outside with a great glass of wine. Heaven!

http://sicilianosmkt.blogspot.com/2011/05/recipe-cheddar-jalapeno-sourdough-aka.html

First off, many thanks to Karin (hanseata) for posting her bake of Dan Lepard’s pumpkin whey bread.  What a great idea, and not just for autumn bakes.  This is a sourdough, whey-less take on that lovely bread. 

I love what the pumpkin does for this bread!  The colors are striking, the crumb is exceptionally moist, and the flavor is wonderfully complex.  The amount of pumpkin added to the dough will affect the flavor of the finished loaf pretty dramatically.  The flavor using this formula is subtle – there, but not up front – and fades over time.  The flavor is much more pronounced with the addition of even 25g more pumpkin (reduce water by 15g to keep the hydration about the same).

I really do recommend an autolyse for this dough because it starts out very sticky.  I tried mixing the first attempt straight off without an autolyse and it was a mess.  I was convinced the dough was far too wet, but it eventually worked itself out and ended up being a little tight if anything.  The loaves pictured here are the second attempt.  They were handled much more gently and turned out much better for it.

Another idea I tried was to mix a bit of cinnamon and allspice with flour and use that to dust the bottom of the loaves.  I kept it very light and the flavor didn’t come through in the finished bread, but it is something I will play with in future bakes. 

And, there will certainly be future bakes of this one, because… YUM!

Marcus

Oh, and the type 85 flour could just as well be whole wheat, but it's what I have on hand at the moment.