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In Quebec the one thing I'm always really looking forward to is, of course, French cuisine. For our daughter's graduation in Montreal we put up in a fairly nice hotel near campus, and went down for breakfast with pleasant expectations.

Heading straight for the croissants I noticed their lack of crispness, cold and tired they were sitting in the display. Well, there was the toaster, and innocently pretending not to understand the warning: "Pas des croissants" ("Nix comprengg!") I revived my lackluster pastry (no smoke alarm).

I really wanted to try once a 100% rye recipe- a dense, moist, delicious bread that I love eating in my trips to europe (not the sponge like clorored stuff they sell in the stores). I decided to give Hamelman Vollkornbrot a try.

I've tweaked the recipe just a bit as I changed the rye chops to cracked rye and I had only 7 oz of it (I've add the rest as rye flour).

Whitsuntide Baking and Other Antics

Today has been a busy day making a range of breads.   I had refreshed both my rye sourdough and wheat levain, with no definite projects in mind.   Given store cupboard availability at the time, this is what I've ended up with:

•1.    Cheese Bread

Hi all, friday a aunt will be visiting us from Italy and bring some rye flour..it's my very first experience with rye cause in Ecuador have not found so...what do you suggest: 100% rye or a mix with plain flour? How "strong" is rye bread compared with a "white bread"?

Thanks for any advice and happy baking from quito. Paolo

I made the blueberry cheese braid (http://www.thefreshloaf.com/recipes/blueberrycreamcheesebraid) today.  Wow, was that good.  here's a pic:

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I also started the rye-starter (http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/10251/starting-starter-sourdough-101-tutorial) and it is doing very well.  So much bread to make!

Part 1:

This is a 50% Wholewheat Loaf, Which involves a BIGA (Preferment/sponge) around 30% of total Flour Weight.

I love the final taste of the bread, it was the best sandwich loaf i ever made so far! Soft, Airy, Light, Tastey, and Nutritious.

"Hey don't mind the background, my appartment is not bright enough"

Today I fired up my wfo oven to make pizza and this morning I made the recipe for my 'Sandwich Buns'.  I needed hot dog buns for Mondays cookout and since the wfo was hot I retarded the shaped hot dog buns in the refrigerator until tonight when the oven had reached a temperature of apx.

Croissants made with 100% wild yeast (captured in Paris).  5 rises over 2 days and enough folding and turning to create 55 layers of butter and dough in the final croissant.  Tasty too.