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I began browsing the fresh loaf mid 2009, when I was trying to learn how to bake proper bread. Over the years the suggestions, advice, support and references have taught me much about baking bread. I enjoy the breads I bake.

Perhaps the best early advice I adopted was from a poster who suggested that if you can buy your flour from your local artisan baker do so. I have done so ever since, in Canmore and now in Golden where I just bought my second bag of bread flour from our local bakery.

I have been dipping my toes into breads with added goodies recently. My favorite part of bread with goodies is biting into a slice and getting a little surprise of olives/raisins/nuts/ etc. I think it adds a nice textural variance to the bread. I haven't made a loaf with olives yet, so when I found this recipe in Hammelman's Bread and had to give it a try. The loaves are about 65% hydration, 20% olives, 10% whole wheat, and naturally leavened. I ended up making a fougasse and a batard. Please excuse the large chunk of fougasse missing here. I couldn't resist. :)

This morning I baked my version of Hamelman's 5-grain Levain. I think this is one of the best breads in Hamelman's book - it is tasty, it is easy to make, and it never fails. Needless to say, I make hardly any changes to the original recipe. Some of the details of my version are:

Hello TFLers! I've been very busy this early in 2019, I almost have no time to post and check TFL. I'm glad I had a little time to post this. I baked this early this January but I'm only posting it now because, you know, teachers have a lot of paperwork aside from actual classroom teaching.

I have been meaning to sprout some flour again and finally got around to doing it.  Boy am I glad I did!  The unique flavor from using freshly ground sprouted flour is amazing.

I made 1 big loaf and about 5 rolls which I ended up eating in 2 days ?.  I do have to say the rolls were probably some of the best ones I have made to date.  The combo of rice, potatoes and sprouted flour made them nice and soft and full of so much flavor.  I am going to make another batch of just rolls next time and freeze them for later use so I don't eat all of them right away!

I needed to refresh two starters, a whole wheat and a rye, and being a positively parsimonious sort of fellow I was reluctant to send 200g of perfectly good starter down the drain. I also needed a new loaf of sandwich bread. What to do? Oh, what to do? Well, I did a discard loaf.

In all fairness I should at this point provide a 'trigger warning' for sensitive sourdough folks. I did use some IDY. However, I offer in mitigation the fact that all flour used in the loaf and the starters was whole grain and home milled.

From How to Make Bread by E. Hadjiandreou

• 250g Bread Flour (BRM)
• 100g Whole-wheat flour (BRM)
• 50g Rye flour (BRM)
• 6g salt
• 150g sourdough starter (100% made with KAF AP & bread flour)
• 300g water 

79% hydration

4 pull and fold style kneads, 10 minutes apart

overnight rest in fridge (12 hours)

2 hours on counter to come to room temp before shaping

proof in round banneton 2 hours at 75 degrees-ish (oven with periodic blasts of bread proof setting) 

This is the most amazing bread I have ever created. I used a banana bread recipe for the base. The original is on Perfect Sourdough Teresa L Greenway’s Facebook site. I had previously made her formula. In an effort to clear out my pantry I decided to incorporate new fruits but keep the other essentially the same. I have canned green Victoria rhubarb from a friend in Wisconsin. I used applesauce that I made from wild apples I picked. I created enough bubbly levain to double the formula making 4– 8x4 loaf pans. The original recipe as published by Teresa calls for discard.

Now that I have discovered a good source of Montreal smoked meat in town, I determined to do the deli rye from Peter Reinhart's, "Bread Baker's Apprentice." I have baked this recipe often, but this was the first time I built a fully rye starter. My previous starters were a wheat/rye mix. this time I starting from my mother, I fed with rye flour four times over three days and for the fourth and final feed added the sauteed yellow onions. After a few hours it was time to mix and bake.