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Instead of spending 5 days making a loaf of bread this week Lucy and I made a batch of Red Rye Malt - which takes just as long -5 days.

All you have to do is sprout rye berries or about 4 days or so until the shoot, not the 3 rootlets that come out first, is at least as long as the seed itself.  The rootlets will be 5 times that long by then.  Then you dry the malted berries over about 5 hours at 105 F.

I love a seedy, nutty loaf.  A dear, old friend of mine would have teased me by calling this a "sticks and leaves" loaf.  Mind you, he was the one with the Birkenstocks, but I digress.  This Treehugger Special was inspired by my taste for heavily seeded, toothsome loaves, as well as my curiosity about porridge breads.  (Oh, and I bought a bag of buckwheat flour that I really wanted to experiment with -- I'm a newbie to buckwheat.  A nubuck.  I won't quit my day job.)   I've read many an Ode to Oat paying homage to Robertson's oat porridge loaf.

Okay, I'm quite sure one is not allowed to have this much fun while baking bread. :) With all the ideas purcolating through my head, many sparked by questions and comments on this site, I decided to go a little nuts with this weekend's fun bake.

My husband is a dark chocolate fiend.  I love to throw dinner parties and no matter how lovely my finale dessert may be, he teasingly chides, "if it isn't chocolate, it isn't worth eating."  (Of course, his empty plate and disheveled napkin bear witness to the contrary....)  So, this one is for the Hubbin!!

The 38-times bread from Czech with whole wheat flour.

I had an inkling that I hadn't baked these in a while but never thought that it was as long as 8 months ago.  SJSD variations?  Yes, but the base product?  No.  

Most of my formula sheets have notes on what the dough feels like at stages: extensible, slack, tight, fluffy...  Do I need to dust the couche more or dust it less post-shaping?  But on this sheet I didn't have any guide, and as it had been a while, I didn't remember what to expect.  

For the 123 challenge bake we chose to do a polish for the 1, NF milk for the 2 and bread flour for the 3.  We also used 10% butter since these are supposed to soft tolls and enriching them is the way to go.  We did not put any sugar in the mix as some would do to make the rolls sweeter.  A pinch of insant yeast was all it took to get things rolling.

Caught up with Zita  TFL (Bakingbadly) in Fremantle today on the first day of spring which delivered us a super day which we were able to enjoy with a couple of new experiences for Zita. No doubt he will post soon on our half day adventure as he did take quite a few pictures  and seemed to have had a good time doing it.

kind regards Derek

As I said when I issued the 123 challenge, I needed an easy dough that I could use to test out new ingredients and compare techniques, etc. So to that end, I decided the other day to make dough for two 123 loaves. I was going to mix them together, then divide them and bulk ferment one in the fridge overnight, then shape and bake the next day, while the other was to be bulk fermented for a few hours, then shaped and proofed in the fridge overnight.