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Warning: This may make no sense at all, and I may be sarcastic and darkly humorous.

I enjoy a dense, tender bread. Why? you may ask. Because it holds my jelly well, and doesn't leak.

This shot features all home made jams and jellies, from left to right: Apple Cinnamon, Highbush Cranberry, Salmonberry, Wild Blueberry, and Crowberry. It forms a wonderful color palette of sweet goodness.

I live in interior Alaska, and many varieties of berry grow wild. I find them, I pick them, I preserve them, I eat them. It's as close as totally organic as I'm ever going to be!

So I made a few loaves and a lot of cookies, here are some pics…….

Toasted Wheat berries before scalding them…..

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Conventional Yeast dough divided and ready for baskets

So I made another attempt at San Joaquin Sourdough and it seems that I'm making progress.

Notes:

Made half a batch (enough for 1 batard)

Switched to Gold Medal unbleached AP flour (from store brand AP).

I chose to mix the dough and water and let autolyse overnight as the levain rose as well.

Last week, i was contemplating the idea of creating a bread that is soft, delicious, and healthy for the young ones. Pullman, and toast bread were two favorites of my kids, but those were all white breads. Looking back in Hamlemans book: Bread, I saw a few notes I have scribbled once on how to convert the Pullman recipe into a whole wheat one without losing much of the original flavor and texture. It was time to put my thoughts to the test. I’ve created a preferment , added some wholewheat flour, and increased water to make a soft dough. The recipe is as follows:

I can't believe it has been nearly a month since I've posted.  This time of year things get so busy, don't they?  Our youngest also has a birthday between Thanksgiving in the States and Christmas, so it seems like we have about a month solid of travels, dinners and parties to attend, as well as all the school and community activities.  It certainly keeps you on your toes.

I have been baking though.  Mostly just standards like the white sourdough loaves above or the Struan bread below.

This is some bread that I made last month and then froze. It's been out to thaw for two days and today it was delicious!

Wow, where did the week go... I haven't even posted last week's bake and Wednesday will be this week's!!! Busy times these holidays. We are all baking goodies for the holidays and they are being well received... Our Sisters' bake was Gubana... Barb inspired this one and it reminded us a good deal of the Babkas we baked from ITJB. Here are the pictures... No problems this week... fun conversations and a fun bake. Helen's whole loaves are the lead in picture, and here is her crumb shot.

So, this time I again dumped the entire leaven into the water (it floated nicely), but then remembered I was only supposed to use 200 grams of it, so I scooped out enough to leave 200 grams in, and followed the recipe to a "T", sort of.

First, despite what others have said, the author definitely contemplates "turning" the dough more than 4 times (i.e., every 30 minutes the first two hours), and so I turned at the end of the third hour for a total of 5 turns.

Following the KAF sourdough pretzel recipe, combined with the two minute baking soda bath recommended in their regular soft flour pretzel recipe, in order to get the golden brown finish.

They came out nice -- although I baked them at a higher temperature since the oven was already at 450 for my Tartine loaf that I had baked.  I lowered the temperature but did not wait for the temperature to lower before putting the pretzels in the oven.

I had a wonderful dinner at Bar Tartine in San Francisco last week. I knew they were doing things with koji and tried a steak tartare served on koji toast but there were so many flavors going on I couldn’t really focus on the koji.