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WARNING - This post contains some disturbing bread images!

First of all - I trust my liquid rye starter. He hasn't got a name yet, but I trust him.

Last Sunday we were having some friends over, some with wheat intolerance, and I decided to make the 100% russian rye (from Bread Matters), that always works, I thought.

And I had made a few nice batches of Hamelman's levain with wholewheat, and somehow the Polish Rye we made on the baking course I recently visited felt not so far from that, and I could make it with my rye starter.

Today was a much needed day off from work. I love the new job, but we're pushing out about 650# of dough per day with an average of 3.4 bakers, and as our production is increasing we're going from comfortably busy to close to overwhelmed.

Anyway, a day to sleep in and generally relax, and of course, do some baking.

This is a formula from “Bread” by Jeffrey Hamelman, a lot of people have made it with good results. I won't duplicate the formula here, see this link for a scaled down version, or better yet, get the book. A few notes:

1 I made the full recipe, got 2 huge 1.5lb breads;

I'm not too picky about flour. In general, I pick the lowest cost unbleached bread flour I can find (for what it's worth, this is almost always White Lilly High Protein Bread Flour, which runs about $0.50/pound). If I can find King Arthur Flour for a reasonable price, I will buy it. In my area, most stores have it for around $0.80/pound -- not too shabby.

Hello,

I must be a glutton for punishment.  After six months of trying to improve my baguette making skills, I'm already raring to head off on a new "quest" after just one weekend of "free" baking.  However, I can't decide between two possible quests, and I'm looking for some advice.  Also, much like with Saturday Baguettes, I'll be posting my results regularly as a commitment mechanism, so if there are folks out there who would be more interested in reading about one or the other, that's important to me too.

Early Summer Baking:

Pain de Campagne with Mixed Leavens and Borodinsky in a Banneton