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Inspired by Karin's (hanseata) pan de muerto, I took her recipe, adapted it, and transformed it into a disaster---well, not entirely. I was content with the shape, the crust, and the crumb, but the flavour was... Bleh! Ick! Eww! And other interjections denoting disgust.

My wife is having a girls weekend in Barcelona with her friends, so the kids and I are drowning our sorrows in dough. This 10% rye boule was made with a combination of techniques from David Snyder's San Joaquin Sourdough and txfarmer's 36 hour baguettes. Crispy, crunchy crust and soft but chewy crumb with medium sour tang. Very satisfying.

Yesterday I had the chance to do a bake of Eric's Favorite Rye following Floyd * Baking Eric's Favorite Rye * and Andy's suggestion *here* that it would be a nice way to honor the memory of Eric Hanner. Eric was a great guy and friend so of course I wanted to make any sort of contribution I could towards that.

We are visiting our son in Las Vegas for Thanksgiving, and I'm introducing him to sourdough baking. This has entailed three challenges. The first is the demands of baking with a houseful of family. This is wonderful, but the scheduling complexity is greater by several orders of magnitude. The second is that Joel does not have a mixer. This is a very minor issue, but it does require adapting some recipes I am accustomed to making with machine mixing. The third challenge is baking in a gas oven.

Every year, we spend Thanksgiving in Palm Springs, California with my boyfriend's parents. The weather there is warm and there are many blue, cloudless days to enjoy. We decided to do an alternative Thanksgiving dinner this year without turkey, cranberries, pumpkin pie, or any of the usual fixings. Instead, we had a nice rib roast, which coasted to 120 degrees F slowly inside a 200 degree oven.

My Daughter’s summer kitchen apprenticeship with my other apprentice seems to have stuck.  She recently made Thai Green Curry Chicken for her boyfriend, - from memory and she quickly impressed Ole Dad with her remembering how to do French slap and folds and stretch and folds on her Thanksgiving rolls that she is always in charge of making for dinner.   

This is very much my take on Eric's formula.   I don't like dried onions, but I love fried onions.   I used my liquid rye sourdough, and it ended up as 30% pre-fermented flour.   There is no added baker's yeast, and the hydration is 70%.   I used an Organic white bread flour in the final dough.   Here is the formula:

Eric’s Favourite Rye

It has been over a week with the stollen being wrapped in cotton and sealed in its tin coffin where the back porch would be if we had one.  Instead we have a covered patio.  So we took it out, leaving its sister to ripen until the next Holiday and decided to gussie it up some to be traditional - a non traditional Brownman trait.  Here it is naked but looking like a million dollars  on a pretty 50 cent Goodwill Stollen Plate.

Then we buttered it up with a pastry brush.