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So – it seems that I have succumbed to the siren song of the baguette…

 Round 1 last week turned out better than I had expected, and the non-traditional blend of flours that I chose was both a treat to work with and absolutely delicious.  The spelt / durum / rye diluted the strong gluten of my Canadian AP flour, so the dough ended up wonderfully extensible, and quite fun to shape. 

So I thought I'd experiment a little and try a rye flour. I'm a very amateur baker so please bare with me if my terms aren't the correct ones!

Starter:
50g canadian flour (14.2% protein) - bought from Sainsbury's, UK
50g water

I left this for 10 days, halving it every day and replacing that with fresh flour and water.

Bread:
350g Dove's Farm White Rye Flour
100g Canadian White Flour
100g of my above starter
300ml water
10g salt

A bread to use up some ingredients I had in the cupboard... I'm actually not a big fan of cranberries, but I had made a promise to an Italian friend for mince pies with homemade filling, and they were left over. (Also left over from the mincemeat is 3/4 of a bottle of brandy hooray).

I made a large loaf, unwise perhaps as I won't have much help eating it.

This sounded so good when Ian postedit I couldn't resist. I only made one 750g loaf so recipe is scaled. I couldn't get barley flakes so I used an additional portion of rolled oats. As I only had jumbo rolled oats I roughly chopped them before making the porridge. I used frozen cherries, defrosted & drained.

ok, so this weekend I decided that I had to try Ian's pecan cherry cranberry porridge bread. I would build some  levain but I would have a bit more than needed so decided to add in a 1:2:3 loaf using up some flours in the freezer. Ok I also decided to have a go at hamburger buns, and then at the last minute decided to add baguettes to the mix! as I say - rocks in my head...

This post is about the baguettes and hamburgers (will do a sepatate one for the SD loaves).

   I don't like drinking coffee, but I do like the flavor in food including bread.  I thought the nice nutty flavor of freshly ground and sifted spelt flour would go well with the earthy coffee flavors and I wasn't mistaken.

I added some Greek Yogurt to soften the crumb a bit and also some real Vermont Maple Syrup to add a touch of sweetness.

This ended up with a nice subtle coffee flavor and tasted as good as I expected.  The crumb was moderately open and soft as desired.

I am continuing my exploration of true porridge breads and for Canadian Thanksgiving, I decided to add pumpkin seeds and cranberries to the basic loaf. I did make one batch without the cranberries and pumpkin seeds to take to my brother's house tomorrow and it turned out wonderful so the cranberries and the pumpkin seeds are optional. You could actually add any type of add-in that doesn't require soaking or doesn't absorb too much moisture from the dough such as sprouts, sunflower seeds, nuts or dried fruit.

The title is a mouthful I know. 

But wow this bread might be my new favorite.

I made a video showing how I made these loaves. It's pretty straight to the point, if anyone is interested in watching. Don't mind my pajamas lol.  

I decided to take (Canadian) Thanksgiving weekend 'off', meaning I won't be baking for either retail outlet for Saturday nor am I doing a regular bake for the subscribers on Sunday. Of course, I'm baking ten dozen Sweet Potato buns for them tomorrow, including half a dozen gluten free ones, and four loaves of Heart Bread for my special customer as well, but you know, relatively 'off'. Which means, of course, that we didn't have any bread for ourselves either (no leftovers to nick from the bread shop on Saturday).

Hi everyone. Before I say anything else in my inaugural blog entry I want to thank everyone who has contributed to the forums and made blog posts on this site. It's been very helpful. I especially want to thank the folks who have been candid about the difficulty of working with 100% whole wheat flour.