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Enjoying the second Country Bread loaf made this weekend. I've got to admit, I'm a bit rusty. I've got to relearn when the preferment is at its peak, and when to end the second proof so that there's enough ummph for good oven spring. Still, the bread is tasty, thanks to Hamelman's formula.  Here are just a few pictures of the process. The first shows the dough ready for the initial, or bulk fermentation. You can see the gluten development in the second photo. By the way, I proof doughs directly on the kitchen counter on a thin coat of oil.

Here are a couple of pics of the bread as it turned out in the end on Sunday. It tasted lovely!

Joanna @ Zeb Bakes

It feels great to be back on the bike. Made my first loaf of a long-fermenting bread after more than a year away from real baking. I'm still getting my sea legs back, but there were glossy holes in the crumb and the crust sang when I pulled the loaves of Country Bread (Hamelman) from the oven.

Will post photos this evening.

Sylvia

It's a slow, agonizing sort of thing that I do.  (Especially being able to bake only once a week.  Hey, King Arthur Flour - if you need a full time high altitude test baker - call me!)  I would like to have the genius to throw many things in the bowl of My Preciousss confident that it will be good bread, but that is not me.  It never has been and I strongly suspect that it never will.  Even if the bread was delicious, I would pound myself with "what if I had done X or Y - would it be better?" No, better to stay single factor.

For the game yesterday, I baked this rustic loaf to munch on during the game with spreads and cold cuts. The football shape was in the spirit of the Super Bowl game in which our home team, the now WORLD CHAMPION Green Bay Packers, was a participant and victor. Imagine my surprise when I cut into the loaf to see this crumb pattern? The karma is thick around these parts when the Packers are playing.

Eric

This bread was inspired by a post at Wild Yeast Blog (and also my inner frugality and curiosity) about incorporating old bread into the dough. The idea is also based on the bread-making wisdom that old bread will improve bread flavour and its keeping quality.

This miche is from David's wonderful post here. I didn't change a thing. Even kept the weight exactly same at 2KG, which makes it the biggest bread I've ever made. I debated using high extraction flour instead, but decided to use AP and WW as SFBI specified just to see how it will come out. Can you tell? I tried to draw Tic-Tac-Toe with my scoring pattern, kinda hard to see after being baked for so long.

Horst Bandel's Black Pumpernickel

Well, dear readers, despite my recent silence on the subject I have not given up on my baguette quest!  For the last few weeks, however, I'd gotten a little sick of blogging about it.  This week was fairly successful, however, and so I want to share, and request some feedback.

We were invited to a Cajun-themed dinner party last evening at a friend's house here in Pretoria.  Not the easiest thing to pull off in South Africa but it turned out pretty well, considering the limitations.