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As I posted the other day, I had some beremeal, flour from an ancient variety of barley, I wanted to try using in a bread. And I also wanted to try Abe's very simple sourdough recipe (http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/66384/very-simple-sourdough-recipe). And although combining two unknowns (new ingredient and new process) - what's the worst that could happen?

Dec. 17, 2020.

Based on previous experiments, I've concluded that "blended" (in a Vitamix blender, as opposed to being milled into flour) wheat berries need to be combined with milled flour to make a decent loaf.

The wheat in this recipe is a combination of 200 grams Prairie Gold (hard white spring wheat)  whole berries soaked for 11 to 12 hours, 25 grams of fine grit semolina, and 22 grams of Gold Medal bread flour.  So the P.G. was 200 / 247 = 81% of the total "flour."

Many families have unique holiday traditions, and mine is no exception. I can summon vivid childhood memories of family outings to choose and fell a tree at the farm, then decorating it with "my" ornaments while listening to Manheim Steamroller's version of Deck the Halls (what a classic!).

I have a stock of organic whole red fife flour purchased from a local farm several months ago. My first runs with it seemed to show that it was too weak to be the only flour in the bread - the dough would start breaking down around the time it was proofed to my eye- it made tasty bread, but the crumb was tighter than hard spring wheat loaves. So I was mixing it with some hard spring wheat and getting good results.

We had a combined leaving/welcome/Christmas celebration at work today, so I wanted to make a festive bake, something fruity, with a little spices. And Abe shared with me a yeasted recipe from a bread machine which seemed to tick all the boxes. Here is a rescaled version converted to sourdough with a stiff starter and a stiff preferment: https://fgbc.dk/13ja

This was a stressful bake. Mainly because lots of things did not go as planned and I had to think on my feet. I prefer mindless baking... thinking baking is stressful. The loaf came out nice though, a bit gummy, but nice.

I was thinking how I would blog about this bake, if I walked through the bake in chronological order, the blog post would get even more tedious than my normal blog posts. So, I think I will write a short summary about what went wrong and then write down the bake as it actually occurred without including the missteps along the way.

Because of the babka debacle from last weekend I had to come up with another bake for some friends.  I decided to bake this christmas cake again as it is really quite good.  I like the combination of the tart cranberries with the sweet honey crisp apples with the spices and rum in this cake.  I like to do a lemon drizzle icing more for the look than anything.

For three loaf pans

7.5 cups flour

2.5 tsp baking soda

1.25 tsp salt

3.75 cup vegetable oil

7.5 large eggs

3.75 cups granulated sugar

1.25 cups packed brown sugar

It's been a while since I posted any of my breads, but two recent bakes, inspired by Michael Wilson's post about Semola Rimacinata are worth sharing. 

presentando pasta madre, signorina Valentina, Bria. La figlia del signor Slow-Mo.

(presenting mother dough, Miss Valentina, Bria. The daughter of Mr. Slow-Mo)