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A sequel to my previous WFO bake of my Greek Pide.  This time it was baked in my electric oven 'EO' just because...I had nothing better to do and wanted to use the dough I had frozen from last weeks previous bake and I was curious to see how the GP would turn out versus the heat of the WFO.  Well, the results were pleasing.  Flavor wise...well very pleasing from the EO..excellent from the WFO.  No doubt there are certain types of breads that benefit from the smokey hot flames, coals and intense heat of a WFO.

With the freezer full of half loaves of recent bread bakes we had time to do some other cooking and grilling.  We ran across these great apricots.  Never seen anything like them - just beautiful color - inside and out.  Almost too good to eat!

So some apricot, nectarine and ginger jam was soon to follow.

Here's Jean-Louis Palladin's brioche, converted to metric (and BBGA format).

FORMULA.

PROCESS.

Make a soaker with whole wheat flour and spelt berries. Let it sit at room temp, covered. A day later, mix yeast with warm water and honey. After 5 minutes, add the foaming yeast to the soaker, along with some salt and enough whole wheat flour to make a sticky dough. Knead for 5 minutes, form a ball and transfer to a bowl coated with good EVOO. Let rise until doubled.

This is a bit unusual. I saw smoked flour on the shelf of Waitrose in Kensington so had togive it a go. The flour is from Bacheldre watermill in Wales and is described as organic smoked stoneground malted blend flour. Their website says that malted wheat flakes are cold smoked over oak chippings for 18 hours in the smokehouse then mixed with organic stoneground malted blend flour. There's a gentle smoky aroma from the dry flour which becomes more assertive when it's wet.

I'm trying to make sourdough bread with Tartine's method, and I can't seem to get past the "make your leaven float" part. I've been maintaing a liquid starter for a month now, and a dry starter for a week, and I just can't even produce a leaven that will float, so I haven't even bothered to warm the oven yet. So lots of flour and water going into the recycling bin, lots of time spent trying to keep my  various colonies happy, and nary a loaf to even dislike. It's worse than bad bread. It's no bread. WTF do I do? I'm feeling exasperated.

I just received my new order from KAF the other day and was dying to try some of my new flours I ordered.  I wasn't too happy though when I received an email the day after it arrived telling me how excited I should be about the KAF 20% off sale!

This 40% whole grain bread is a combination YW and SD starter, seeded, multi-grain that does not have sprouts or a scald.  The hydration of 79% is not too much for a bread with so much whole Rye, WW, spelt and WWW.  There is also semolina in the starter and the dough as well.  There is a little potato flake, red and white rye malt, wheat germ and 6 kinds of seeds.  Sunflower-25 g, anise-3g, hemp-10g, coriander-2g and fennel-3g with only the flax seeds ground into a flour.  Since the bread was not retarded to bring out additional SD flavor it had a slight t