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It’s a stunning morning with gentle early winter breeze. I could see the tips of my tall bamboo shrubs waving in the yard out of the window in my tea room. Years ago when I was working, racing to the airport on Friday afternoons to see family, rows and rows of bougainvillea that lined the expressway to the airport would dance as my taxi flew by. I used to count the waving bougainvillea, as do I now with the bamboos against the bright blue sky.

What do I bake on this early winter morning? I feel like something that would add some heat, some aroma.

We always seem to have smoked and BBQ ribs for many holidays. This Memorial Day was no exception.  In KCMO where I grew up, the ribs are famous and are always served with Wonder Bread.  I was looking for a different bread when I saw Floyd’s Sweet Potato Rolls in the home page.   I though this might make a great bread to go with ribs.

 Wanting to bake another sourdough bread with a larger portion of whole rye, I started searching on the internet, and came across this recipe:

http://beginningwithbread.wordpress.com/2008/11/08/sourdough-rye-with-walnuts/

This was interesting because I had some walnuts left from something else. Not quite enough, so I added some sunflower seeds. Roasted them a bit.

Hello everyone,

Shepherd’s Bread, from Beth Hensperger’s book Bread for all Seasons, is the May challenge for the Bread Baking Babes baking group.
Thank you to Karen of Bake My Day for hosting the challenge - this bread caught my interest, seeing the beauty of
Karen's loaves and having enjoyed reading Ms. Hensperger’s book :^)

What is traditional bread anyway? The more I read, the murkier this question becomes. Steamed golden crusts, curling gringe, high protein flours mixed into sloppy doughs and possibly even salt are a pretty new phenomena in the history of bread – yet they are marketed as ‘traditional’. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to create ‘traditional bread’ but I do like to understand where we came from to get were we are going. I guess I don’t want to get caught up in trends. Saying this however, I do have a particular bent towards French bread.

This weekend, I departed from my cheese bread experiments to try again a wonderful tasting bread from Hamelman.  The Whole Wheat Multi-grain is a sourdough with about 50% whole wheat, a taste of honey and the baker’s choice of other grains and seeds.  Some day I want to try it with cracked wheat, but I couldn’t find any.

I was inspired to try adding some balsamic vinegar into one of my breads after reading about Karen Hanseata's Wild Rice bread on the Fresh Loaf this past week.  I have some cherry balsamic  that I love using so I was curious to see if it would have any affect on the taste of my bread.

There are a few cookbooks that I have on my shelf that I find myself coming back to time and time again. The last few days, I've enjoyed browsing and re-reading sections in three such books, namely Jane Grigson's classic «Charcuterie and French pork cookery» and Fergus Henderson's more recent cult classics «Nose to tail eating» and «Beyond nose to tail».

A real Brown Plate Special with 2 different tamals, chipoltle sauce, red curry mac & cheese, brown and black re-fried beans, corn tortilla chips, Baja grilled chicken and a touch of guacamole. Plus this weeks amber ale and our take on Hanseata's Wild Rice brown bread.

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Made this today in my new Cajun dutch oven

120 g 100% hydration starter (fed night before)