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My son has been begging for banana bread.  I have been obsessed with sourdough boules.  So I found the recipe for Cranberry Chocolate Sourdough on SourdoughHome.  As you can already guess, I decided to make it, adding the bananas.  It was a mixing nightmare, super elastic dough, smushy bananas & boiled cranberries refusing to be mixed in.  So I just kind of squished it together and over 3 hours attempted some S&F's.  After 3 hours it finally relaxed & I was able to shape it into a kind of boule and bake it.  Pictured are the results.  I th

I generally follow trends slavishly, but I can’t get into the nine-pound-miche thing that seems to have taken TFL by storm.  In fact my one and only complaint about miches is they are too large for my small (albeit voracious) family of only two carbovores.  I know they can be divided and a piece frozen, but they’re never as good thawed as fresh.

After two years following the directions and/or advice of Dan DiMuzio, J. Hamelman, a bit of Reinhart, and a lot of TFLers, e.g., dmsnyder, SylviaH, Susan, Debra Wink, proth5, hansjoakim, ehanner, ananda, and a host of others, I'm comfortable that I can consistently bake satisfactory sourdough loaves, reminiscent of Vermont, Norwich, San Jouquin, etc., while at the same time, feel they are subtly my own.

Cinnamon Raisin Brick Shape ?

I've been making Peter Rheinhart's Cinnamon R/W bread for some time now. It rises well enough in the loaf pan. A good inch above the rim. However, there is no oven spring whatsoever. In fact, it recedes slightly below the rim. The resulting loaf resembles a brick, not the nice domed loaf I prefer. The crumb is nice enough though, not squished at all. The yeast is good, I use it with success on my weekly weekend Baguettes à la Bouabsa. Any thoughts?

I've been baking bread a long time and I'm still amused by the narrow line between success and failure. I fed my sourdough starter last night in preparation for baking a (singular) rustic loaf today. When I looked at the starter early this morning it had grown to over 16 oz. by weight. Being a frugal person I decided to use all the starter and made a monster ball of dough. I blended 2 recipes, substituted and blended flour, and basically just winged it with autolyse, proofing, and shaping. I ended up with a 2 1/2 pound boule and 20 2 oz. rolls.

My lovely husband brought two bottles of Polish beer. He is not an average man who enjoys his time with pals watching games and drinking beer. He said that he was given the beer and  I could make the bread with it. 

So I did. In my opinion the best place for alcohol is in food. I also marinated and baked a leg of lamb with the second bottle of beer.

1st build of the sourdough starter

Wednesday 1:30PM-8PM

My first attempts at boules weren't so grand and glorious.  I had several flat, dense loaves that I was too ashamed to take pictures of.  Things have progressed but I am just a newbie.  My friend called me a bread nerd, I felt kind of excited about that.  Maybe I can truly be a bread nerd someday.  I made a pretty good loaf this morning, but now I want to do something a little more daring...like add more ingredients.