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Well it's been since I first found TheFreshLoaf in 2006 that I posted to my bread blog. Up until recently I hadn't had much time or energy to do much baking. Couple that with my love of crusty breads and whole wheat and my wife likes non-crusty, white breads and all the married folk can understand how this variable can decrease the amount of bread time for Jason. Well I had the time recently and wanted something to challenge me and get me back in the swing of baking so I scanned the site and decided on Floyd's Pain sur Poolish recipe.

Silesian Light Rye 1

Leader's "Local Bread" has three formulas for Polish ryes. I have made the Silesian Dark Rye once and the Polish Cottaqe Rye many times. Today, I made the Silesian Light Rye for the first time.

I found this photo in my camera. This was a straight up French bread, like a 65-2-1 combo. It had a 3 hour poolish, with wasn't enough to make a big difference, but it tasted pretty good.

Yesterday, we were heading out for the day and we were also out of bread. I decided to throw together some dough and stick it in the fridge until today.

So, I put 4 cuops of sifted wholewheat (14%protein) and about 2cups of water and 1/2 cup milk (its thirsty flour) added some oil and salt also. I only put 1 teaspoon of yeast and everything was quite cool. I then let it sit for 20 mins to align the gluten while I got ready, then kneaded it for about 2 mins,,,,,not even that really....and threw it in the fridge.

Makes 4 large or 8 small.

 1 recipe 10 Minutes Dough ( I use 2 whole wheat flour cups +3 white flour cups in this recipe).

1) Preheat the oven to 550F.

2) Divide dough into 4 or 8 pieces.

3) Shape each piece into a ball.

4) Roll each piece to round.

It's been awhile since I've baked bread... I'm baking some today and it's rising right now.

I haven't been a complete slacker... I made brownies recently.   They were more than half gone before I could take a picture (we had company over - I swear I didn't eat them all myself)

Thanks to a combination of techniques learned here (better kneading, shaping and slashing, esp.) and (maybe) a new baking stone, my oven spring keeps getting better and better. Last night I baked a simple 25% WW loaf. After proofing my shaped oval loaf for 4.5 hours, I put nice long slashes mostly-lengthwise acroos the loaf and the cuts immediately opened up, showing I'm getting good surface tension. Slipped it on the hot stone, and within 5 minutes, it exploded.

My wife was asking me to make a "soft" white bread, so I hacked together a potato bread.  I'm not really sure what the recipe was, but there was WAY too much potato.  The dough was super sticky, but I forged ahead.  Oven spring was fantastic, but the bread was so soft the bread fell back in on itself upon cooling (the slash mark was strecthed flat upon removal from the oven).