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This is an 83% rye bread with a whole and chopped rye soaker and leavened with a ginger beer barm. As part of the total hydration it includes water that has been infused with fresh ginger to lend an accent of fresh ginger throughout the bread.

Ginger/water infusion

My last chocolate experiment was a bit (allright, a large bit) too sweet. This time, I eliminated the extra butter, brown sugar, and maple syrup, and went with 2 oz of bittersweet choc chips and 2 oz of milk choc chips. I added 5 oz of dried cherries and 4 oz of pecans. I also used 100% home-milled flour (mix of hard red and white wheat) and the sourdo.com Russian starter. After an initial 4 hour proof, I shaped and put in a pullman pan.

I've been wanting to learn how to cook and bake certain things for a while -- especially bread -- and I finally did it. I made one loaf yesterday that came out rather doughy on the inside, hard crust, and even harder bottom crust. Here are the things I think I did wrong with it:

Hello,
We stopped in at Mix The Bakery in Vancouver awhile back and picked up a loaf of their Cranberry Ginger bread.
This bread was delicious! (I wish I'd taken a picture of it).
Thinking about holiday 'gifts from the kitchen', I thought of this bakery's wonderful Cranberry Ginger bread.

Well, I'm having a busy baking week(end), getting the last few of my Christmas biscuits and the like made, ready to post to my relatives across Europe. I also made the Mohn Bars from the Inside the Jewish Bakery challenge, which will be part of the Christmas treats delivery too.

I have been reading with interest the postings by Andy (ananda) about his work with double levain breads.  Until now I had not experimented with them, but I had a fully refreshed rye sour at hand. I have already baked a solid brick of a Russian Black bread with that sour, and whilst licking my wounds I have been looking for something a little less difficult to exercise my sours with.  I'm not sure if double levain falls in that category or not, but at least it is not a 100% rye bread.

Pecan Roll

Cheese Pocket 

Both these pastries were made with the Babka Dough from Inside the Jewish Bakery by Stanley Ginsburg and Norman Berg.

Got to try out my new toy today.  I've been working on this for a couple of weeks and it worked great.  The proof box is temperature controlled with a Johnson A419 controller set to control a small desk top heater placed in the bottom.  The rolls are a soft dinner roll straight dough that can be used for a variety of products.  I am catering a dinner for 100 tommorrow and made over 12 dozen rolls today.