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Yesterday I made Rose Levy's Cinnamon Raisin Loaf from her Bread Bible.  It's an enriched dough, using a sponge and lots of butter (no eggs, except one beaten as a wash for the interior of the rolled dough.  It gets rolled out, an egg wash applied, sprinkled with cinnamon sugar and rolled into a loaf.  It's somewhat labor intensive but the recipe produces a really good bread.  However, there's a mistake in her recipe, which if you have Bread Bible, you should note.  On page 261 - "Flour Mixture and Dough", she lists the ingredients: flour, dry

with the help of my dad and sister, i finished the insulation layer on the oven. the only thing left to do now is a plaster layer - which won't affect the performance. that means baking can begin as soon as this layer is dry enough.

before we applied the final layer, though, i ran a cook of four pizzas.

Light Rye & pumpernickel

Silesian Light Rye from Leader's "Local Breads" 

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I have been baking for about 2 years now. A check of my history shows that I have been on the road to enlightenment for 1 year and 23 weeks at TFL. I started with the BBA by Peter Reinhart and then his Whole Grain Breads. A few other books have caught my interest along the way and I noticed that Hamelman's "Bread" always got high marks but some thought he was really talking to the pro audience. I started to notice that many of the breads I liked had references to Jeffrey Hamelman so I thought I would take the plunge and see if I could keep up.

Recently I have been trying to find breads that deliver great flavor with a nutty after taste and also look good. After I found Mark Sinclair's Back Home Bakery recipe for Multi Grain bread I have come to appreciate his experience and sense for selecting grains and methods. I have made 5 or 6 batches of the Multi Grain and it is just so full of flavor I can't get over it.

Here are some pictures of a batch of Hamelman's light rye that I made using a couple of dutch ovens simultaneously.  I did the entire mixing/kneading process by hand just to be able to get a good feel for the dough.  I doubled Hamelman's recipe and made 2 three pound loaves using 2 dutch ovens.

3 loaves

Sponge

512 gram AP

608 gram water

68 gram honey

4.5 gram active dry yeast (1 tspn)

-combine all until very smooth

-ferment 1 hour at room temp, 8 to 24 chilled.