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This fancy French named bread is really a Rustic Country San Francisco Sourdough.  It originally started out as a Glenn Snyder Country SD bread minus the rustic and the sweetbird, that she is,  took the recipe and tweaked it some and came up with the most amazing crust on a bread I have ever seen.   I just had to try my hand at it and converted it further to more my liking by; using a rye sour starter,  grinding my own WW and rye, increasing the rye to equal the WW, reducing the AP accordingly and then adding 50 g of whole WW and rye berries that were boiled in water for 30 minutes and then drained.  The berries were put back into the pot with 1 tsp of olive oil and then sauteed until caramelized.  I was hoping for a bread that would be more rustic, have a deeper more flavorful taste, a deep brown crust and crumb that was soft, moist and still somewhat open.  Well, I think all but the somewhat open crumb was achieved.  I guess you can't have everything.  It is the one of the best textured and tasty breads I have ever eaten.  It, like most breads, is much better toasted with butter and I'm guessing the flavor will be better tomorrow as well.  I can't wait to try this on a new sandwich creation tomorrow.  Here are some pix's.  The recipe follows the pix's

 Rustique Pain Comté de San Francisco

Yield: Two 750g Loaves

Ingredients

Levain Build

86 g AP flour

25 g Whole Wheat flour

25 g Whole rye flour

175 g water, cool (60 F or so)

30 g active culture (72% hydration)

   Final Dough (68% hydration, including levain)

600 g AP flour (77.5%)

87 g whole wheat flour (11.25%)

87 g whole rye flour (11.25%)

440 g warm water (80 F or so) (57%)

14 g pink Himalayan sea salt (1.5%)

313 Levain (40%)

Scald and Caramelize: 50 grams of WW and rye berries boiled in twice as much water as berries by volume for 40 minutes.  Drain berries and return to pan with 1 tsp of olive oil and sauté until the berries caramelize and start to leave color on the bottom of the pan.  When color starts sticking to the pan they are done.

Directions

 1.  Levain : Make the final build 10-12 hours before the final mix.

2. Mix: Add all the ingredients to the mixing bowl, including the levain, but not the salt or the scalded berries. Mix just until the ingredients are incorporated into a shaggy mass. Correct the hydration as necessary. Cover the bowl and let stand for an autolyse phase of 60 minutes. At the end of the autolyse, sprinkle the salt over the surface of the dough, and knead 4 minutes with dough hook on KA 3. The dough should have a medium consistency.  Add the scalded and caramelized  berries and mix on KA 3 for 1 minute   

3. Ferment with S&F: 3 hours. Stretch and fold the dough in the bowl once 10 strokes at the 30minute mark. Stretch and fold again, 5 strokes, at the one hour mark folding it into a ball in lightly oiled bowl.  Leave to ferment 1-2 more hours until the dough is at least 75% larger than when you started the ferment.

4. Retard: do 1 S&F in the lightly oiled bowl forming the dough into a ball again.  Refrigerate 8-20 hours, depending on how much time you have and sour your taste.

5. Divide and Shape:  take dough out of refrigerator and let it come to room temperature about 1 ½ hours.   Divide the dough into what 2 pieces and pre-shape, then shape into boules or batards 20 minutes later.

6. Proof: Approximately 1.5 to 2.5 hours at 72° F. Ready when poke test dictates.

7. Pre-heat: oven to 500 with steam apparatus in place - 45 minutes minimum.  I use a loaf pan half full of water and a dry12”cast iron skillet that go in the bottom rack of the oven at the beginning of pre heat and the stone on the rack above.  When the loaves go in, I throw 1 cup of boiling water into the cast iron skillet right after loading the bread on the stone.

8. Bake:  Slash loaves. Bake with steam, on stone. Turn oven to 450 F when it hits 500 F after loading loaves. Remove steaming apparatus after 15 minutes. Bake for another 15 minutes more or 30 to 35 minutes total. Rotate loaves for evenness as necessary. When done (205 Finternal temp), leave loaves on stone with oven door ajar, oven off for 10 minutes.  Move to cooling rack until loaf is room temperature.

Hello,
These are two breads I've wanted to bake, for quite awhile. Really glad now that I have, as both of these breads are so delicious, each in their own way! With thanks to Shiao-Ping and Mr. Leader for their lovely recipes :^)

Shiao-Ping's Banana Pain au Levain <------>Mr. Leader's Whole Wheat Genzano Country Bread

I so enjoyed reading about Pane casareccio di Genzano in Mr. Leader’s book, Local Breads.
This was a really nice post, too, with great photos of that beautiful and dark crust:
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/24109/trip-genzano-and-forno-legna-da-sergio

This is a try of the whole wheat variation, Pane lariano, with some variations; I reduced the instant yeast to 1 gram, mixed by hand, divided the recipe amount into two loaves (instead of one large loaf),  and retarded the dough overnight (for convenience)…so this is not the bread Mr. Leader intended…but I am very pleased with the resulting flavor (it’s a delicious, delicious crust!).

The loaves were baked in a hot oven, preheated to 500F; then 475F for 15 minutes, 465F convection for 15 minutes, 450F convection for 7 minutes, then left in the oven (turned off/door ajar) for 10 minutes.
The loaves sang and crackled :^)

                                      The bran-flecked crust

  After cutting the end off of one loaf, 
                                                                                                                  I was nervous about the crumb, 
                                                                                                                  but really happy with the crust!

          The crumb, a little further into the loaf

The crust could be darker yet! (yearning for my own WFO :^)  )

The second bake today, Shiao-Ping's Banana Pain au Levain, makes a beautifully moist and fragrant loaf; I used a combination of fresh and frozen (defrosted) banana, ripe and sweet. The sweetness and flavor of the banana really carried through to the baked bread - great flavor!

I tried to score a 'banana' on the top of the loaf; here is the crumb (the gorgeous aroma of banana bread filling the kitchen at the moment this photo was taken!):


What wonderful discoveries these two breads were, today.

Happy baking everyone!
:^) from breadsong

So this year my son turned 10, and he requested a cake that was all sorts of "half-and-half".

Half of his cake, he wanted "hockey" themed. The other half, he wanted "warrior cat" themed. (He's been reading a series of books about fighting cats)

And he wanted strawberry AND chocolate cake as well.

I wasn't up for making a layered cake, so I asked if he'd take a strawberry cake with chocolate chips in it - and then found myself having to make something up since I couldn't find anything that matched that description online. The boxed strawberry cake mixes from the store are pretty...meh.

So I found a bunch of strawberry cake recipes that called for a white cake mix and a package of Strawberry Jello, or I'd find ones that were totally from scratch that had crushed berries in them but which weren't pink, so I decided to go with something in between since I'm not fond of the boxed white cake mixes and wanted something in between.

I am very pleased with this one, because I've never messed with a cake recipe that much before.  It came out very strawberry flavored, not too sweet, with just the touch of chocolate.

Pink Strawberry Chocolate Cake:

This is the recipe I came up with when making a 9x13 "hockey rink" cake:

I put some frozen strawberries in a ziplock the day before I made the cake, so they'd thaw before I made it.  Then for the cake, the first thing we did was to mash up those berries. This was a great job for the littlest helper who was excited to help make her brother his special cake.  The leftover mashed berries can be thrown in a container and used for smoothies later - bonus!

cream together:

• 1 3/4 cups white sugar
• 2 sticks of butter (1 cup)

then add:

• 4 eggs
• about a Tablespoon vanilla extract

when this was all ready, dump in and mix gently:

• 3/4 cup of the mashed strawberries

mix the dry ingredients FIRST, and add to the batter mix:

• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 3 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 small package of Strawberry Jello gelatin mix (this stuff basically gives it that ice cream parlor taste, along with the crazy color)

And finally, after youve mixed all that stuff together, add in

• 3/4 cup of milk
• 1/3- 1/2 cup mini-chocolate chips (the mini ones were perfect for this!)

Fold it together and you're going to have some pretty shockingly pink stuff to cook with.

 Pour it into your pan, having greased the sides with some butter beforehand.

Oh - and I discovered an awesome trick which is kind of a "duh" but which had never occurred to me until I ran across it searching for recipes - line the bottom of your pan with parchment paper and your cake will be a snap to pop out of the pan! 

Bake @ 350 for 1/2 hour and then start checking the cake with a toothpick to check when it's ready (toothpick won't come out mushy) - mine took about 40 minutes.

THAT'S A PINK CAKE! Your house should be smelling pretty "strawberry" now.

parchment paper, I love you!

Once the cake cools, it's time to frost:

Take

• 2 packages 8 oz cream cheese  
• 2 cups confectioners' powdered sugar in a mixing bowl, and whip with an electric beater until smooth. 

(*DONT DO THE NEXT PART UNTIL THE STUFF IS SMOOTH, or you'll end up having to "zamboni" your ice rink like I did and start a new batch because it'll end up all powdery )

Then add about 

• 1 cup of heavy whipping cream and beat again until you have a spreadable consistency.

Decorate as desired, in my case, it was with a hockey rink and some printed card cut-outs of pictures of cats playing hockey. :)

I needed a break from gluten free baking and felt like baking with REAL flour!!! lol I found this recipe a while back on the Internet somewhere but sadly no longer have the link.

500 grams wheat flour
280 ml water
7 grams dry yeast
15 grams baking malt
15 grams of salt

Lye solution
20 grams of sodium hydroxide (NaOH)  dissolved into 1 litre of cold water

Mix all ingredients until the dough forms a nice soft ball, I used my mixer with the dough attachment and then kneaded by hand because I haven't kneaded a dough in soooo long! Kneading is like free therapy :-)

Cover the dough and place in a warm spot for 1 hour or until it has doubled in size.

Remove the dough and knock it down and then divide the dough into 12 equal balls (66grams) let rest for 10 minutes and then form into pretzels and place on an oven tray lined in baking paper.

 Cover and let rise for 20 minutes in a warm place.

Then place the trays in the fridge for 1 hour (or longer if that suits you, I have left them overnight) this makes the pretzel firm and they will not fall apart when you dip them into the lye bath.

BTW this photo is NOT my food fridge, it's the beer fridge in the backyard!! lol

As you can see after 1 hour in the fridge you can easily pick them up without the pretzels bending. Leave the pretzels in the fridge until you are ready to dip them, they soften very quickly!

Next the Lye Bath:

USE EXTREME CAUTION: Caustic even a weak solution like this is considered corrosive. Always use gloves and use extreme care. Never use Aluminium with caustic soda, and always line your baking trays.

Add 1 litre of COLD water into a GLASS bowl and then add 20 grams of sodium hydroxide (NaOH) into the water and stir until dissolved. I used a stainless steel slotted spoon to stir the mixture.

Put the pretzel onto the stainless slotted spoon and then lower it into the lye bath for about 10 seconds.

 Drain the Pretzel and place back onto the lined baking tray, score (through the thick part of the pretzel horizontally) and  sprinkle with salt. Place in a preheated oven at 180 Degrees Celsius for 20 minutes. Once you have dipped them they need to go straight into the oven, so if you have a few trays leave the surplus trays in the fridge  and dip and bake them when the oven is free.

Now I'm off to eat these with a BBQ dinner that my husband is cooking :)

Cheers Sonia