Although this bread is the topic of a number of posts here at TFL, I wanted to make it as presented in Hamelman's Bread (as nearly as possible) so that I would have a baseline for future bakes. Since making it, I have re-read most of those posts and recognize some things that I will employ for the next attempt.
If you love pancakes and happen to have a Blendtec blender... try the pioneer pancake recipe. They are really quite delicious and you can't really make a simpler pancake. I don't know if this would work in a regular blender or not.
We are always on the lookout for a good hamburger bun recipe for our monthly hamburger feast. We saw a post by KMIAA about some buns they baked from here http://www.food.com/recipe/japanese-tangzhong-milk-bread-water-roux-493704
That we thought looked perfect.
Totally from scratch loaves! There was no recipe, I used what I had on hand, and went by taste, smell, feel and 30 years of home baking experience to come up with something totally unique.
There's a little yeast, a lot of sourdough starter. I used oat, whole wheat and all purpose flours. Added a little honey and a little turbinado sugar. Mixed in some unsalted nuts and seeds (walnuts, almonds, cashews, pumpkin and sunflower seeds, all unsalted). A touch of walnut and sesame oils.
The above breads were made with the same recipe. As I have written before, I was looking for a good sandwich loaf. The trouble with the round bread is that it is a pain to cut into sandwich size pieces. The trouble with baking a "white bread" that I have had is that it is so soft that it is a pain to cut into slices without the bread crumbling.
So the first loaf was pretty stiff. Upon reviewing the recipe I noticed that the water called for can range between 12 and 14 ozs, therefore the hydration of the main dough can vary between 59% and 70% ... of course the starter can affect the overall hydration and my starter is hydrated at 50% while Reinhart calls for 100% hydration in this recipe.
Oops.
Nonetheless the first batch was good. As I mentioned I gave a loaf to a friend who enjoyed it, and my kids housed the other loaf. A neighbor came over on Saturday afternoon and I gave him a piece and he also enjoyed it.
After reading Khalid post on Miche, it really itches me to bake on myself. I didnt use SFBI formula, instead I followed Jeffrey Hamelman - multi-flour miche to create this beautiful monster.
This is the second time I've baked a high percentage rye bread. The first was Hamelman's Volkornbrot; I wasn't elated with the result. ( http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/14991/christmas-baking-blisters ). That was four years ago.
Lately--happy with my progress with sourdoughs, baguettes, challah and deli rye, and motivated by a number of other TFL'er's seemingly annual flurry of activity with Borodinsky rye Ioaves I thought I give it a go.
This is the loaf along with two slices ready to eat. The recipe I used makes 3 loaves.
