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I had lunch with a friend in Minneapolis at an establishment called The French Meadow Bakery. I had bacon and eggs, which was served with a couple slices of toasted sourdough. The bread was like a typical sourdough, but had a hint of caraway.

It's listed on the menu as organic sourdough toast. No mention of caraway. Perhaps it was just stored next to a caraway rye. In any case, I decided that I would try to make a sourdough that has all the wonderful characteristics of a standard sourdough, but with a subtle taste of rye and hint of caraway.

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/recipes/bananabread

My daughter left today for Belgium to start a six week (French speaking) holiday and visiting our family friends over there.  A couple of days ago I asked if there's anything she'd like me to make before she goes.  She said, "Something familiar."  I can take the hint.  Recently, I have been experimenting with rye flour and my family are not very impressed with the result.

In addition to the Greek bread, about which I wrote yesterday, I made a couple of pizzas while visiting with family this week. I used the pizza dough formula in Hamelman's bread, but used Pivetti typo 00 flour from nybakers.com, made the dough with sourdough rather than commercial yeast, and did all the mixing by hand. 

Ham & Pineapple Pizza 

Years ago I stopped making New Years resolutions.  All that ever resulted was a big measure of guilt because I couldn't usually get beyond 24 hours without breaking them.  One of the problems with previous years resolutions, is that they usually involved a diet.  And, as we know, most diets treat bread that an evil that is to be totally avoided for fear of ever losing weight. 

I read in MC's beautiful blog, [b][color=red]farine-mc.com[/color][/b], that Miche is not her favorite bread but that she can understand how someone can go wild about it.  She said, "It is a majestic bread ... rich with the lore and fervor of the old days."    That is exactly how I feel about Miche!  "... rich with the lore and fervor of [color=red][b]the old days[/b][/color]." 

    Well, I've completed a couple of weeks without the mixer.  It has been an interesting and informative time.  I have a very nice Kitehcn-Aid which my son gave me for Christmas about 4 years ago.  It was a refurbished machine which works fine and had given no trouble all this time.  Based upon the experience of others, I decided to mix by hand so I could get to know my dough better and to develop a sensibility to its needs.  This is not something you can get from a book, and failure is your best teacher.  Analyzing what went wrong with a bread

Wishing you a happy new year, with lots of baking. I am sorry for being absent from TFL, I must concentrate on a different hobby next half year (college). Regarding baking I am stuck in Reinhart's Crust and Crumb, which is not a bad thing. Lots of rustic and french bread, favorite is still the SF sourdough from the trail. I did continue experimenting with new forms. I also scan TFL every now and then, thanks for all your posts.

All the best for 2010!

Cheers,
Jw.

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