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I confess, I am in no way skilled at lamination and hardly ever make croissants. It’s something I’ve done only a handful of times. These were my best yet and not only that, these are solely leavened by natural means, a first.

Original recipe found here - I scaled it down and used a lower ratio of butter for folding in.

I am geting a "burnt" bottom on my breads. I bake at 450 in a gas oven in one cast iron pot and one ceramic pot covered, both have the same effect. I tried putting two layers of parchment paper between the bread and the pot, still no luck. I bake for 40 minutes covered and 8 minutes uncovered.

Pics............

My breads are bipolar. One day they are soft, white & enriched, made in BM, cut into neat slices with help of a slicing guide, and exactly what kids' order and on another day they are made fully by hand, using any combination of flours that strikes my fancy, chock-a-block with seeds, nuts, dried fruits, meats, cheese and almost anything I like. I think I must be really going overboard with my bells & whistles as my husband sweetly told me yesterday that he loves all the breads which I make, but for one day could I make a simple crusty bread, without any seeds, nuts, et al.

2:45 AM March 8, 2013 (50.75 hrs)

Back trouble caused me to turn in early and miss 12 AM deadline. But change seems minimal in both ferments. To make it easier on myself, I'll be referring to the cultures by the color of the container lids: Red for Reinhart, Blue for Ortiz.

Red

Looks exactly the same as yesterday: no bubbles, no change in size.

Reinhart's book says that's to be expected. Proceeded with Phase 2 as directed.

12:00 AM March 7, 2013 (24 hrs)

Reinhart Stater

I noticed a thin layer of clear amber colored liquid develops on top of the mixture between stirs. It was too thin to photograph. Other than that, there was no chnage.

Ortiz Starter

Condensation has appeared on the sides of the container. The shape has flattened somewhat.

Here's my first go at the sourdough oat bread recipe I received from a friend of mine.  I made half a recipe and made note of the weight of each item as I went along.  The formula can be found in grams by following the original posting of the recipe at http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/32444/sourdough-oat-bread

The crumb -

Welcome to my Lab of sorts.  For the next week or so, I will be documenting my progress on two different ferments I started at 12AM EST on March 6th, 2013.  The first is from Peter Reinhart's book Artisan Bread Every Day.  The other is from Joe Ortiz's The Village Baker.

We had some semolina left in the house that we needed to get rid of. We usually use it for making porridge (cream of wheat), but winter here is pretty much over with, and we had all this semolina lying around. Having just discovered this site and learned a panload of new techniques, I was eager to try something new. So why not semolina bread?

Well, because semolina isn't really supposed to be used for making bread, and I really should have known that.

My wife is not a big fan of my multi-grain breads and I'm always getting on her for not trying more of my breads.  For this reason I agreed to make her an English Muffin bread, which was simple and plain.  Well you know by now if you follow my posts that I don't know the meaning of the word simple so here is as close as I could bring myself to make a simple English Muffin style bread.