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This week I've been honored by a visit from Pat Roth (aka proth5.)    I invited her here and happily enough she decided to come and share some of her baking wisdom with me.    One of the things I particularly wanted to master were those pesky brioches à tête.   How do you keep those heads up high?   How do you keep the neck from thickening until they look like body builders with no discernable distinction between body and head?   

These are urgent matters but first

Lucy decided to do another take in her minimum 15 grain no more than 30 ingredient challenge bake found here: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/39184/4th-july-%E2%80%93-15-grain-independence-sourdough-challenge-bake  but this time using sprouted whole grains for 50% of the grain and cutting way back the other ingredients to a total of 22 (LaFama AP, KA bread flour, salt, water, IPA  added to the 16 whole sprouted grains.  22 is a pretty big number around here

Eric's formula calls for neither a bold bake, nor making a ginormous boule instead of two smaller ovals, but I have been using my immense IMUSA caldera for big miche-like loaves for a while and couldn't resist giving an excellent deli rye a Forkish twist.

What is the best way of telling the internal temperature of a sourdough loaf?  Probe thermometers will create holes in the loaf. Any Ideas?  Also There is quite a difference in prices for thermometers that seem to have the same capabilities.

Thank You

Jim

I put a lot of energy into flavor and feel of my bread and usually it has a look that I am happy with too. But I really love seeing loaves that are decorative and have beautiful shapes. I am so often impressed with the loaves of people like Anna Giordan.

I had to make loaves for small table settings. Since it was the holidays I did a typical boule, but paired them with a wreath shape inspired by Anna's La Spiga Francese

My first 2015 bread bake…. Wild Rice Bread.  In Minnesota and Michigan you can buy very good quality wild rice that cooks quickly and is light and fluffy.  I buy "broken" rice (not perfectly whole grains) for bread baking since it is a bit less expensive.  The rice gives a nutty flavor to this part whole wheat bread….great for sandwiches and toasting.   

My Christmas bake for Friends.

I have had a lot of fun making a five grain levain recipe over time, and I wanted to add more grains and play around with hydration and fermentation on this bake.  The recipe below is an adaptation of Hamelman's five grain levain.  This time around I added pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds and poppy seeds to the other grains: bulgur, sunflower seeds, oats, flax seeds and cous cous. Maybe it's really eight grain; not sure if all the seeds count as grain!

This turned out pretty well for me.  Crumb was delicious and the toast it makes is lovely. I followed recipe to the letter using KA AP flour.  Will do baguettes with this recipe only will use KA French.  Hope pic of crumb loads.

I decided to fool around a little with the 80%biga recipe from FWSY. Used 50g of my 100% sourdough starter to build the 800g biga, subbed in 25g each of WW and whole rye instead of using all white flour, and despite the whole grain flours ended up with dough so slack that my nerve broke and I added another 21g of AP during the mix. Oh, and in a further departure from protocol all the mixing was done in a Bosch universal. Gave it a lot of stretch and folds in the bowl during the bulk ferment.