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but certainly not my worst ! This is a practice run - I intend to try again next week . It tastes delicious but did not rise as expected. I " babysat " the starter for a week , feeding it every four hours on the final day. The final proof ( in the Brod & Taylor Proofer at 80F ) took eleven hours to reach within an inch of the top of the mold ! I took it out of the oven at midnight...... Just wish I knew what I did wrong . Maybe I should ask myself what I did RIGHT the time it turned out perfectly two Christmases ago ! Merlie

George Bernard Shaw once said “there is no love sincerer than the love of food;” I am re-writing that sentence: “there is no love more sincere than the love of bread.”

Sourdough is one of life’s simplest pleasures. How lucky I am to not have gluten intolerance.

I made these to bring to my Brother-in-laws for Thanks Giving while visiting North Carolina as usual.  I adapted my formula for Potato SD Pretzel rolls and adjusted the water to compensate for the removal of the potatoes.

This recipe uses the starter you were going to discard when feeding your starters. It is a tasty, moist cake that is not very sweet. The bananas are placed in a caramelised sugar and brandy sauce before the batter is dolloped on top. The original recipe used bourbon, but I had some brandy on hand, in preparation for making plum puddings. I used my discarded rye starter and wholemeal flour to give it more colour and texture. I also baked it in a ring pan instead of a skillet. It is a great combination of flavours and I may try it with apple wedges or pears in future. 

Happy Thanksgiving to all of the Fresh Loafers.

Claudia

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/45779/mothers-day-and-birthday-croissants-and-pains-au-chocolat-des-veinnoiseries-maison-sans

was thinking about what bread to bake, BBGA spreadsheets that I have set up but not yet tried, so started my levain build and things just took off at a tangent from there.

Today's bake: Lemon and raspberry muffins and mocha chocolate chip cookies.

feel good now! :)

Leslie

Just want to share the result of one of the experiments I have recently done.

I was testing what kind of bread I get if I take 1000g of wheat grains and mill them and then sift out only the bran. I got about 86% extraction flour. Recipe was simple: 15% mature levain from same flour, 2.5 hour BF with S&F every 30 minutes, dough temp 28dC, , divide, preshape, 30 minutes bench rest, final shape and immediate retard, baking after 8 hours direct from fridge. Seeds: crushed flax and sesame added one hour in BF,  85% hydration.

Yay, The FWSY Country Brown turned out beautiful! I did fudge the recipe a bit. I cut down on the initial hydration and then added water back in when I was happy with the consistency of the dough, so not sure of the final hydration but the dough was very soft and stretchy. I used fresh hand-milled stone-ground flour for the whole wheat portion (about 38% overall) so I wasn't sure how much water it would absorb. The grain was hard red spring wheat from a local farmer, and the flour smelled wonderful!

In the spirit of the holidays I've been experimenting a little with enriched sourdough breads. A couple months ago I adapted a TFL formula from txfarmer for sourdough pumpkin hokkaido milk bread. I really love the texture of this style of bread, and have found that if I use the stiff levain quite young (6-8 hours), the resulting tang is barely distinguishable. (If I want more of a tang I'll use the levain when it's around 10-12 hours old.)