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My wife found some high extraction sprouted rye and high extraction sprouted red and white wheat hanging around somewhere.  I knew it was sprouted because it said it was on the label on  the lids. I’m guessing it was ground up about month ago…… so you could say it was properly aged, the term millers use to make people think they are getting their flour at the peak of freshness when it really just hiding their 30 day supply chain timeline to get it to you.

Bernard Clayton Jr's The Breads of France, Daniel Leader's Local Breads, and Joe Ortiz' The Village Baker each offer formulas, recipes, and lore on European bread. The authors, all from the USA, published their books between 1978 and 2007 after travels in France, Italy, Germany, Czechoslovakia (as it was then), and Poland. In recent weeks I've been concentrating on French breads from these books, specifically pain campagne and pain de seigle.

Probably everybody who was reading my recent posts is interested to hear how the bread assessment finished. As this will be a slightly longer post I am revealing now the most important fact: I got the gold award.

So you can stop reading here, you already got the crucial part of information. However, maybe you would like to continue and read some background information and some interesting facts about this kind of assessment.

I am LOVING the crust I get from the 00 flour! I now bake a pizza every 3 or 4 days and am getting better at forming the crust. Still don't have the courage to try a toss, but it doesn't seem necessary. This dough had been in the fridge for 3 days before I divided it today.

The only change from my last bake was upping the hydration. I proofed it on parchment paper that I did not flour well enough. After the turn, the dough was welded to the parchment, which no doubt affected the shape. Nice open crumb though. Next step 90%.

Happy baking, Ski

Most weekends I bake two loaves of Tartine Country Bread.  I like the repetition of making the same recipe and enjoy seeing how my bread progresses from week to week.

I decided to live on the edge yesterday and make the Tartine Polenta bread.  I used some leftover pumpkin seeds from Thanksgiving, as well as thyme and chives instead of rosemary.  Next time, I’ll either add more herbs or skip them altogether.  I thought I used a generous amount but they’re barely detectable in the final loaves.