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I have been meaning to sprout some flour again and finally got around to doing it.  Boy am I glad I did!  The unique flavor from using freshly ground sprouted flour is amazing.

I made 1 big loaf and about 5 rolls which I ended up eating in 2 days ?.  I do have to say the rolls were probably some of the best ones I have made to date.  The combo of rice, potatoes and sprouted flour made them nice and soft and full of so much flavor.  I am going to make another batch of just rolls next time and freeze them for later use so I don't eat all of them right away!

I needed to refresh two starters, a whole wheat and a rye, and being a positively parsimonious sort of fellow I was reluctant to send 200g of perfectly good starter down the drain. I also needed a new loaf of sandwich bread. What to do? Oh, what to do? Well, I did a discard loaf.

In all fairness I should at this point provide a 'trigger warning' for sensitive sourdough folks. I did use some IDY. However, I offer in mitigation the fact that all flour used in the loaf and the starters was whole grain and home milled.

From How to Make Bread by E. Hadjiandreou

• 250g Bread Flour (BRM)
• 100g Whole-wheat flour (BRM)
• 50g Rye flour (BRM)
• 6g salt
• 150g sourdough starter (100% made with KAF AP & bread flour)
• 300g water 

79% hydration

4 pull and fold style kneads, 10 minutes apart

overnight rest in fridge (12 hours)

2 hours on counter to come to room temp before shaping

proof in round banneton 2 hours at 75 degrees-ish (oven with periodic blasts of bread proof setting) 

This is the most amazing bread I have ever created. I used a banana bread recipe for the base. The original is on Perfect Sourdough Teresa L Greenway’s Facebook site. I had previously made her formula. In an effort to clear out my pantry I decided to incorporate new fruits but keep the other essentially the same. I have canned green Victoria rhubarb from a friend in Wisconsin. I used applesauce that I made from wild apples I picked. I created enough bubbly levain to double the formula making 4– 8x4 loaf pans. The original recipe as published by Teresa calls for discard.

Now that I have discovered a good source of Montreal smoked meat in town, I determined to do the deli rye from Peter Reinhart's, "Bread Baker's Apprentice." I have baked this recipe often, but this was the first time I built a fully rye starter. My previous starters were a wheat/rye mix. this time I starting from my mother, I fed with rye flour four times over three days and for the fourth and final feed added the sauteed yellow onions. After a few hours it was time to mix and bake.

Kalamata Olive and Asiago Cheese sourdough , had a nice taste

Artisan Bread School is running the following courses:

Winnipeg, Canada 1 - 5 April 2019 COURSE FULL

Fattoria degli Usignoli, Tuscany, Italy 6 -10 May 2019 PLACES AVAILABLE https://www.artisan-bread-school.com/course/five-day-course-at-fattoria-degli-usignoli-italy-may-2019/

Fattoria degli Usignoli, Tuscany, Italy 14 - 18 May 2019 COURSE FULL

I'd mentioned to Abe that I was thinking of rosemary and onion for my next bake (working on shaping and scoring) and he came back with a suggestion for this lovely recipe for tomato bread by Emmanuel Hadjiandreou.

Of course, why not?

The first surprising thing was the quantity of levain: 300g of 100% levain for 400g of flour! And since I wanted two 700g-ish loaves, I found myself building 450g of levain over the course of two days, after which I left it to retard in the fridge.

The various Rosellas in our garden loves eating the lavender seeds, sometimes daintily holding it with their feet while eating. It served as my inspiration for bread this week. Lavender makes me think of France, so voila, Lavender Fougasse! 

The lavender flavour is very strong, so I used only a sprinkle and combined it with rosemary and orange thyme. I used my wheat sourdough starter for this one.

This week I decided to wing it somewhat, a departure for me. I made a dough I’ve made often before - 30% whole wheat, 79% hydration, 12% levain - and added a soaker of a small handful each of sesame, flax, chia, pumpkin, and sunflower seeds. I didn’t weigh the seeds or water in the soaker because I knew it would be a much higher percentage of the dough weight than much I was taught to use. My bad! I’ll have to experiment to recreate it to get the wonderful aroma and flavor. The dry seeds were probably around 30% or more of the dough weight.