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Sending this to Yeastspotting.

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I love a good country bread as I think most people do. It is one of the most fun, beautiful and often times challenging styles of bread to make. However, I find myself becoming bored of the standard 10% whole wheat flour in the formula. In an attempt to changes things up I will often raise or lower the percentage of whole wheat in the dough. As little as a 10% change can have drastic effect of flavor. I've also tried putting all the whole wheat in the starter, something that adds quite a bit of sourness to final flavor.

After getting back from Houston where it rained cats and dogs, I had to bring it back to Phoenix since we have been dry for a year.  It has rained just about every day since returning.   It is monsoon but yesterday, we had to get nearly 1.5" of rain at home where we only get 7" a year.  The clouds were ominous.

Then they got orange in a pinkish way as the sun set.

Just captured a new sourdough starter culture in Prague, Czech Republic.  The first loaf was a lovely wheat with solid rise for a baby, and now, I'm feeding the culture whole rye and buttermilk to make a classic Eastern European Pumpernickle loaf.  This sourdough starter from Prague is going to be a great wild culture for home baking!

For the first time in a few months, I baked some Tartine Basic Country Bread.   It remains among my favorite breads for crumb texture—it hits the perfect point for me between light/pillowy and chewy.  

We are back home (as of last weekend) from a week with 18 Snyder family relatives in Ft Bragg, a few days in Prague and 4 days  with 62 of Susan's family members, coming from 7 countries, in Warsaw, Poland.

I just had to share: Brother Glenn teaching granddaughter, Naomi, to shape bagels.

David

I have some left over brisket and pulled pork in the freezer I defrosted to for this weekend so I wanted to make some rolls that would be good for sandwiches.  I have been experimenting with my Wild Yeast Water Starter over the last month or so with some mixed results.  My last experiment to convert a recipe for New England style hot dog buns to WYW ended up with bread sticks so th

My Bread & Buns.

This is my best bread I have ever made.

This is what you would need to make it.

One large bowl one jug.

Ingredients

1 ½ Lbs white bread flour

1 Tablespoon vital wheat flour

1 teaspoon Xanthan gum

1 ½ teaspoon quick yeast

2 teaspoons of sugar

1 ½ oz butter

4 cups of milk

Every other weekend we have friends come over to our house for a little socialization and we take turns providing food. Last week was our turn and I wanted to get away from ordering take-out like we have been doing lately. I wanted to put some effort into the meal instead of being lazy so we decided on burgers and BBQ chicken. I took this opportunity to make the rolls for burgers. This is the second time making the Kaiser rolls from Peter Reinhart’s The Bread Baker’s Apprentice and I was hoping these would turn out better than my first attempt. Turns out I was right!