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Hi there, after lurking and reading for a couple of months without being registered, I decided it was time to join in and share my stories with other bread freaks. To be honest nobody in my direct group of friends or family can't get exited when I talk about gluten strength, hydration or crumb. They all do love to eat the bread though...

Sunday, I baked a couple loaves of Hamelman's Pain au Levain with Whole Wheat. This is a wonderful everyday bread for me. It's a favorite player in a host of bread roles. (No pun intended.) I see that alfanso has nominated it for some prestigious post - I can't figure out which one, but we definitely share an admiration for this bread. Here's mine:

Ever since trying Skibum's pulla this summer I've been meaning to bake one.  

I used jarkkolaine's recipe as the basis since it had metric weights.  The one notable difference is that I used a tangzhong to try to get a fluffier crumb. Did it help? Mmmm... I'm not sure it did, but I may not have nailed the timing quite right.

As the primary season for the next US president officially kicked off this evening (although there has been ad nauseum preening and jockeying going on for a year already), I decided to throw my support behind the candidate most suitable.  I can't really decide on one, although I'm leaning toward the tall dark handsome candidate by just a hair.

This was a cautious attempt at making bread with spelt flour using a recipe from Tartine #3. Overall there is 40% spelt flour and 60% wheat flour. It's probably not enough spelt flour to really raise any serious issues but still a little intimidating...

This bread was the result of the above request.  I decided to concentrate on dried fruit since there was a couple packages almost empty. Finished off the cherries and blueberries while tossing in some dates and sunflower seeds.

Hello, everyone,

Long time no see!   Hope all is well and Happy New Year!  I have been away from TFL for quite a while.  During this time, I stopped baking bread, got rid of all the starters and bags of grains that I had accumulated,  and devoted my very limited free time to pursue other hobbies. 

A while ago I wrote a post, Life With Fred; Maintaining a Starter In Pictures, about how I maintain my starter; an approach focused on minimizing both waste and stress. The starter, Fred, seemed pretty resilient. While I usually baked every week or two, sometimes Fred would cool his heels in the fridge for a month or more. I wondered how long he could go between feedings and still remain viable. I knew that dabrownman was taking a similar no-waste, laissez-faire approach.

Lucy was intrigues by David Snyder’s recent repost of his 2011 WW yeast bread from BBA using txfarmer’s intensive kneading technique.  We aren’t much into yeast breads or enriched yeast breads but any technique that might lighten the load of whole grain SD breads is worth a try. 

Gosselin levain baguettes with Whole Wheat

Referencing back to David Snyder's wonderful levain version of the also wonderful Gosselin baguettes, I decided to make another change and subbed out a bunch of the AP flour for Whole Wheat.  This brought the whole grain, including what is in the levain itself up to ~33% of the total flour.  A pretty hearty version.