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turned out to be one of the best things that ever happened!!!

Rus's Borodinsky 1940

I could save the crumb somehow but this was a tricky bake...literally the dough stuck on the couche and I had to peel it off..you can see how  the optimist inside me even tried to score.....ha. ha. ha......one baguette I ate out of frustration straight away to destroy evidence while it was warm and Pat was my partner in crime! Barney needs to loose  weight and was not allowed a crumb and Jacob was at school!

Two remained...

Or at least upping the hydration.  My first two runs had the hydration at the prescribed 73% and then 70%.  That first at 73 presented issues with a too sticky dough being difficult to shape and then to extricate from a heavily floured couche.  The subsequent run at 70 yielded much better results as I documented earlier.

I have started feeding my levain with semolina. I had forgotten how much it loves it... grows so fast triples in a couple hours. This is another 1-2-3  tripled with additional water . I don’t measure but probably 100 g . The barley ,I think, is responsible for the incredible taste of the last bake and the color of the finished bread. Will report when it is cut. 

300g 100% hydration semolina fed levain

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  It's been too long since I made some bialys.  Bialys seem to be the forgotten stepchild of bagels it seems :).  My original formula and procedure is here.

Fry something of course - two somewhat cruller looking crullers - these are #5 and 6. First four got consumed already.  I been a little worried my oven is going to explode since it caught on fire recently and so couldn't resist mixing up a quick choux and crafting a makeshift piping nozzle out of a plastic mini containers. Turned out ok - better than sulking all day - happy baking and thank the powers if you haven't killed your oven ;)

I was in London yesterday and at Linas Stores they had this very nice Italian 00 pizza flour which I understand is low in protein and gluten but might give me a lovely crunchy crust....(thank you again for the tip Abe, but they did not have the durum anymore.....)

So, I worked with Matteo Festo's low gluten formula as in his book Natural Leavenings and the key difference to my normal process was that he uses much more leaven to speed up the bulk and only a very short rest for the dough after mixing with leaven and then adding the salt.

Hello friends!!

I hope everyone had a great weekend :)