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After making a decent BBA Pain Polaine the other day, I next made two breads from Maggie Glezer's "Artisan Baking" book that use a very firm starter. I've made Thom Leonard's Country French bread before (p. 133) and that came out very good, but I was really blown away by how good the Essential's Columbia bread (p. 82) came out! After tasting this Columbia bread, it was disappointing going back to taste the Poilane, I liked the Columbia much better, although granted they are somewhat different styles of bread:

I made this last night from BBA. My slashing is improving but I don't seem to get them deep enough to get "ears". Here it is right out of the oven:

After getting some good advice from this site following a failed first attempt at wild yeast sourdough, I continued to feed my starters every morning and moved them out of my 60F kitchen and into a 70F location. I finally saw what an active sourdough starter should REALLY look like (notice the rise above original fill lines in marker):

At the moment I am lingering between the recipes from lessons 1 and 2. Slowly improving my skill in kneading and learning my observing the dough as it rises and with little things I do differently.

I made a double batch of lesson one basic bread dough two days ago. One loaf was for us, the second for Xmas day at the brothers house.

Santa came thru last night with a couple of items from the Baker's Catalog and I have a few questions:

Received a round clouch and the instructions all say to put your dough into the cold clouch and then put it in the oven. Has anyone used a ceramic clouch with the kneadless batter, putting the batter into a hot clouch. Will the ceramic crack?

Also received lidded pain de mie for making square loaves. Does this give a crisp crust or no crust at all?

Thanks.

Happy holidays eveyrone and may all your dough rise next year.

I returned from my three week vacation in Canada late on wednesday morning.

Yesterday I baked two loaves for neighbours and today I bake a 18 cup batch of dough ( ciabatta.) I will take this to the neighburs midnight dinner to celebrate.

I did not get to bake too much at my families homes..I was too busy cooking chicken enchilladas for my nephew, who at 18 can inhale them.

Tomorrow I have two couples coming for a traditional turkey dinner. so...Iwill keep this short as the brownies are due out of the oven in any moment..

Happy Hoidays to all,

Be well

Friends of ours are fond of panettone, so I thought that I would try making some for them as a Christmas gift.  After much browsing, I decided to use the recipe for Il Panettone Milanese, located here: http://italianfood.about.com/library/rec/blr0946.htm.  One of the things that drew me to this one is that it uses a naturally-yeasted biga, instead of commercial yeast.  I figured that my sourdough starter (which isn’t especially sour) would yield a good biga and it did.

Since I found this site and joined up, I have been baking ever 2 or 3 days. FOcusing mainly on the "basic loaf" recipe from lesson 1. My bread making has improved with each loaf. My kneading skills have improved immensely and with it my bread quality.