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So I figured after 6+ years of dedicated TFL reading & researching, I'd finally start providing a bit of content to the discussion.  Below is a grab bag of recent bread experiments to get caught up, with precious little commentary, for which I apologize in advance.  Happy to answer any questions, of course, and in the future, I'll try to post one or two such experiments at a time, with a bit of explanation of what I was attempting.

Cheers, Drew 

Pain au levain (FWSY recipe)

I am always trying to get bigger holes, so I experimented with a bit more hydration.  The stakes were high as my sister-in-law and brother-in-law are visiting from England, and Bob was a baker for more than 30 years!

They seemed to enjoy it.  We had lunch outside on the patio.  The crumb was good, but I am always looking to improve.

This weekend's bake started Friday evening -- I removed my starter (housed in a 1/2 pint mason jar) from the fridge and added a tablespoon (yes, I use a tablespoon and it generally weighs from 18-22 grams) of starter and added it to 200 grams of cool water. I added 100 grams of KA organic all purpose flour and 100 grams of flour that I blended from hard winter red wheat berries the previous week and let the mixture sit overnight.

   I've added cocoa to bread before and it gives the final product a nice dark complexion with a subtle chocolate flavor that resides in the background.  I also added some chocolate infused olive oil and chocolate flavored balsamic vinegar to make it interesting.

I used a mix of freshly milled flour along with some French Style flour from KAF and added some left-over mashed potatoes to round out the formula.

I'm living in India, hail from Belgium and my paternal grandmother was German.  This (especially the latter part) might explain my love for Laugenbrezel (pretzels made with lye).  Whenever I'm in Germany I just HAVE to sample at least one. I've always wanted to try and produce these and a recently recurring bout of insomnia provided me with the time to do some nighttime baking.

http://www.finecooking.com/recipes/classic-croissants.aspx

Hi all.

It has been some time since I baked or posted. In late January I started a new job. It is wonderful, but it has seriously cut into my baking time. I do log into the site very day, trim spam, help people with their accounts, and so on.

Seen here is cinnamon raisin oatmeal bread and a couple of sourdough loaves I baked on Sunday.  Neither came out perfect, but I can't complain considering how long it has been.  

Not posting much lately, but still fiddling around. One of the things I've been doing is messing with a formula that typecase posted here: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/35925/need-help-scaling-recipe. Not quite there yet, but here's what the latest spin on it looks like.

Film at 11

This is sesame bread from Tartine Bread book. I followed Chad's formula and instructions to the letter, and it yielded a delightful bread. 

Sliced.. Mmm, the aroma!

Nutty and sweet.

I was thinking about lemon poppyseed cake but wanted to bake bread so I came up with this. It is great! light and aromatic and pretty darn tasty.

• 462g bread flour 60%
• 238g all purpose flour 31%
• 140g 100% hydration levain (9% water 9% flour)
• 554g warm water 72%
• 46g poppy seeds 6%
• 2g lemon zest .3%
• 15g salt 2%

1 hr autolyse with everything but the salt,

1 min slap and fold 

incorporate salt and 6 min slap and fold