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This morning I was on the way to making some lovely artisan bread using a long-fermented Biga starter but unfortunately I over-mixed the dough! Over-mixing creates a horribly sticky mess and it took me half an hour to clean everything, including my hands. Hopefully those that have experienced this will sympathise.

Pressed for time I decided to make a quick loaf with some improving ingredients available in most kitchens.

A while ago I admitted neglecting some of my baking books, never giving them a second look, while shamelessly favoring others. To atone for my neglect, I pledged to give every book a fair chance with my "Equal Opportunity Baking" list, with one recipe from ALL of my baking books.

For a long time I wanted to bake this bread. It sounds like home, and it tastes like home.

I am from the Black Forest, here a photo taken during my last visit:

Wolfgang Suepke posted the formula in his blog - quite a nice read because he sheds light on some regional eating habits in Germany.

This is a moist, sweet cornbread similar to those made from Louisiana to North Carolina. You'll find it served with just about everything, like Chicken & Butter Beans or Red Beans & Rice.

To make a classic Cajun breakfast cereal known as 'couche-couche' (pronounced 'coosh-coosh'), crumble some in a bowl and pour warm milk (or café au lait) over it. I prefer to heat the cornbread and then pour ice-cold milk over it, but that's just me.

If you like your cornbread dry and savory, like those made in Texas and the American Southwest, this is not it.

I figured it was time to make some Rye bread so I converted my whole wheat Desem starter to a Rye sour starter using a 3 step build.  I ended up making way more starter than I needed, but I rather have some extra than run out like I did the last time I made a rye sourdough bread.

Many more photos get taken than appear on my blog. Picking and choosing is an agonizing task. Sometimes a photo just doesn't fit within the context of the prose but more often than not I have just taken so many photographs that tough compromises need to be made. I have decided to collect an assortment of photos and post them so they may see the light of day. Many will be familiar to readers of my past blog entries.

Please welcome the B-sides Part 1 ...

Please welcome the B-sides Part 2 ...

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Please welcome the B-sides Part 3 ...

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It has been several months since I made baguettes.   I had promised myself I would do a multi-week baguette experiment and compare different formulas and build my technique. But life intervened.  I’ve been very busy at work, and there never seems to be time for baking all the breads I want to bake.

We took 100 g of our last bake:  The SD / YW Chacon Revisited – 90% Whole Grain, Multigrain Sprouts, Walnut and Sage Paste, and Pumpkin Seeds and used that as the starter for the pizza and pide dough.  It was weird having nuts, seeds and sprouts in the final dough but sure made forming the crusts fun and interesting with these add-ins tearing holes when ever they were encountered :-)