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I began baking bread in 2009 after being laid off from my job.  It was not a life long desire to bake bread.  In fact, I hadn't even spent much time in the kitchen at that point.  But somehow, I became enthralled with bread baking.  Might I even say, passionate about bread baking.  And because I suddenly had lots of time on my hands, I practiced almost daily.  Not necessarily baking every day, but reading about, or buying supplies for, or tending a starter for baking.

Hi all,

I am new here and this is my first post on The Fresh Loaf!

Today I would like to share my first attempt at baking Sourdough Boule with Japanese Clay Pot.

Japanese Clay Pot (a.k.a. Donabe) is a symbol of comfort food for Japanese people.

(Oh, by the way, I am Japanese :-))

I am back today, to tell you all about one of our favourite breads these days: Pain au Levain. I’ve baked this bread using one of Codruta‘s recipes and we loved it!

Time schedule:

Sometimes I look through recipes and don’t have what they require or just want to use stuff up that I have. Lately I have been enjoying my seed and grain breads, and mixed flour breads. I had some nice organic brown rice and some millet I wanted to use up. Personally, I think the hydration in dough is often the deciding factor in a quality outcome so I try to pay attention to that and try to determine it for recipes I review.

 OK, so first I needed to decide how much bread to make. For this experiment I figured I would start with a 1kg loaf just to test.

Okay, I'm back to my normal self again baking abi-normal breads.  I've made bread with corn flour before, but this time I wanted to use a slurry of roasted corn as well as use corn flour in the sourdough starter.  I also wanted to add some cheese and I thought some nice salty tasting Feta cheese would be a good combination.  The bread is just about to come out of the oven and I ca

   Every once in a while I feel the need to make a more simple bread; one that will make a great sandwich.  With that in mind I decided to make a version of a Pain Au Levain using some French style flour from KAF, whole wheat and some dark rye flour and toasted wheat germ in the final dough.

Long time, no see, TFL.

In summary I've been away, coping with a hefty workload and tending to personal matters. Of course, I continued baking---a tendency I doubt will be curbed or abandoned. Why's that? Because baking is my stress-reliever. (I'm sure many homebakers can relate.)

Without further ado, I present to you my latest experiment: Cumin Walnut Cheese Rye Sourdough Bread.

I have too much starter, and I am too frugal to throw it out (sorry Mr. Forkish) so I made Sourdough-Bacon Pancakes

Then it was time to bake off the loaves from the overnight proof

Time to take the lids off

I've made Bialys before using high-gluten flour that I purchased via mail order. The cost with S&H for a 3lb bag is $13. That's OK for something I only make once in a while, but still I wouldn't be opposed to getting the price down. I don't know anyone that I could order commercial flour through, but even if I did I am not interested in a 50lb bag. What I want is something I can buy off the self at my local chain grocery store.

Yesterday, i was meaning to bake Hansjoakim's (a TFL member) Pain au levain with Rye sour, but changed my plans at the last moment. I stared at the Ripe Rye sour sitting in the bowl and thought of possible alternatives to my intitial recipe. I wanted a 100% wholegrain bread so I browsed through the bread books i have and found that most recipes needed a soaker of some kind, which i had none. I decided to improvise and bake some bread with my whole wheat and whole rye flours.