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The above is typical of my sour note experiments. Nice crumb, medium tightness. Golden color. Above is a typical example of my oven spring. I want more, a lot more. 

I want a bursting loaf, something that will rise so high that it scrapes the top of the oven. I have accomplished pretty much everything in a basic sour loaf except exceptional oven spring. Some things I have learned that have improved it are:

I first began baking these almond cookies the week before Christmas and every time I run out, I bake another batch. The recipe is from Penelope Casas' "The Foods and Wines of Spain." As the cookbook author says, she has been known to eat them by the dozen.

These cookies are delicious and quite easy to make:

1 cup flour

3/4 cup ground almonds

1/2 cup sugar

pinch salt

1/4 teaspoon cinnimon

1/4 pound or 1/2 cup lard or vegetable shortening

1 egg beaten

Same Day Pizza

David Snyder

February, 2019

This huge mistake might just keep Lucy from getting to First Class Baking Apprentice.  We went to the trouble to make another fine cube in the Oriental Pullman pan for the wife’s daily sandwiches and everything went swimmingly swell until Lucy really screwed it all up.

And an experiment in scoring.

Having fallen in love with the taste of this loaf and avidly read all the accounts of the different experiences with this bake, I was ready to take another shot at it. Abe had suggested in passing that I try baking three loaves, each with different scoring.

Sure, why not?

I decided this time, too, to try doing the whole procedure from mix to bake in the same day, rather than overnight retarding.

Monday night

• fed my rye levain 1:2:2 for the first build

Tuesday morning

I have made a few iterations of a naturally leavened whole wheat loaf with nuts and seeds. This loaf was inspired by Maurizio's 50/50 loaf (theperfectloaf.com) but I took the liberty of adding some seeds. As for the flavor, I can't get enough of it. I will find any excuse to eat a slice; whether it's a seed butter and jelly sandwich, a soup accompaniment, or with avocado and egg, it's a real treat. Despite the high proportion of whole wheat, the crumb opened up wonderful for a light and airy loaf.

 It’s Chinese New Year again! Traditional celebration food is usually either heavy in sugar or fat… Why not celebrate it with healthy Chinese-New-Year-inspired SD bread instead? :)

Triple Red Grains Sourdough

Dough flour (all freshly milled):

90g       30%       Whole red fife wheat flour

I recently chanced upon an interesting recipe in the excellent Baecker Suepke's blog.

It is for a Black Forest chocolate cherry sourdough bread. The Modernist Bread version springs to mind, but the Black Forest one is different - not sweet, apart from the cherries - and it has toasted sunflower and pumpkin seeds. I also added some non-salted pistachio seed, which gave a rather nice contrasting green colour.

The full text of the recipe is here: https://www.theperfectloaf.com/beginners-sourdough-bread/

But, in summary: