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Last Sunday the weather turned British over here, time to do something REALLY BRITISH:

A Pimms party with our neighbours!!!

I supplied some of the food: Tried and tested Sesame Crackers and Swedish Thin Bread (from Bo Friberg's book The Professional Pastry Chef), to go with some hoummous and guacamole.

I will give only a brief description of the process, as making these tasty crackers is really easy, and the formulas and stories around it are published in Friberg's book, which I highly recommend:

Sesame Crackers

Bread Flour 77%

I was on vacation for a week and used my starter for nothing but pancakes (which, because they were watered down, came out more like crepes) and when we came home on Saturday, I knew that my usual tartine bake was not going to fit in with my weekend schedule. 

Fortunately, I had yet to bake from Flour, Water, Salt & Yeast and I decided to give it a go with a <gasp!> 100% All Purpose Flour loaf, using <gasp!> commercial yeast!

I have been baking some of my favorite recipes lately, mostly for family and friends.  While I was in the Midwest, I made a classic sourdough and Tartine sourdough with olives, lemon zest and herbes de provence (2). (my updated recipe links are below)

I was a bit concerned when I got home that my California sourdough starter was tired and flat, so I worked for a few days to get it back to normal.  It seems to be OK now, as I baked some bread for us today and for friends on Saturday.

I'm just popping in here to make a note so I'll hopefully remember this so I can make it again. (And keep tweaking the recipe, of course). Anyhow, I was reading local breads this morning and contemplating making some olive rolls from it, couldn't find oil cured olives in the grocery store, but the final dusting with cornmeal stuck with me to this afternoon. Once again a case where I intended to make sub rolls, but my hands decided I needed more practice with baguettes (which I clearly do).

The Chinese like soft and fluffy white breads. The whiter, the better. It might explain why something called Hong Kong flour exists. The HK flour is bleached and low in protein so that the resulting bread is super white and super soft. I don't really mind if my Chinese breads turn out white or not. So I just use what I have on hand which is Central Milling's Artisan Bakers Craft, a 10.5% protein, organic, malted, unbleached flour. The results are definitely more off-white than white. Soft and fluffy is easy. Enrichments such as butter, egg and milk will do the trick.

  One of my favorite breads is my Sourdough Date Bread which was inspired by my good friend Khalid.  Since I recently picked up some fresh dates from the supermarket the other day I figured it was time to try it again but with some slight modifications.

Lucy noticed that we were out of Jewish Deli Rye sandwich bread and pumpernickel too so she was flummoxed as to which one she would craft up a recipe for this week.  Of course she chose pumpernickel since I is always her favorite kind of bread but, since I had recently smoked a corned beef, freezing half, I told her the pumpernickel would have to wait.

Another loaf made using the "Sponge and Dough" method, only this time the sponge contained whole wheat flour and vital wheat gluten.

Formula:
Sponge:
70% Stone Ground Red Whole Wheat Flour
5% Malted Milk Powder
2% Vital Wheat Gluten
0.5% Salt
0.6% Instant Yeast
0.18% Soy Lecithin Granules
73% Water (variable)

Dough
30% Bread Flour
4% Brown Sugar
3% Shortening
1.5% Salt

Baked my first San Joaquin Sourdough based on http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/24078/san-joaquin-sourdough-update (Thanks to David!)

I reduced the hydration to 70% instead of 75% since I am not comfortable with high hydration dough yet.

My shaping has room for improvement.

Crumb shot.