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  With Mini Oven’s Eclipse Bread challenge in mind, and the need to get my “mother” durum starter built back up, I started last week by pulling out 10g each of my 65% hydration rye and durum starters and starting with 3-stage levain builds, getting them both up to 80% hydration, and shooting for about 270g total of each levain.

Having managed to create two yeast waters, from plums and apples in my own garden, it was time to try them out to make some bread.

This bread was inspired by a nmygarden comment (Thanks Cathy for your comment!!!!) to my Elderberry and Hokkaido squash bread.

I wanted to be a little bit more innovative with this bread. I knew I need to make a black dough which was kind of a mental reservation for me, but then I accepted this idea and got 20 g of black color made from charcoal.

This bread is really a little bit unusual. I used sourdough colored with charcoal to simulate obscuration and Hokkaido squash to simulate the sun's corona.

The dough during the bake expanded much more than anticipated due to intensive fermentation in the bottom part which was warming up slowly due to the squash collar. I created an opening in the bottom of squash to get more even heat transfer and also to get another "solar eclipse" from the bottom side of the loaf.

I think I don't need to explain more as pictures are self explanatory.

First two movies:

This month Mini Oven challenged us fellow Fresh Loafers to create a special bread to commemorate the upcoming total eclipse of the sun. Spurred by astronomic ambitions I began to ponder how to go about this.

Just a new bread? Where was the connection to the total eclipse?

A two-toned dough? Once I baked a marbled rye bread and found its taste rather underwhelming.

Squid ink as a black dye? Not my cup of tea!

I haven't made a rye bread in a while and I wanted to a nice moist one that would be good for sandwiches.  The addition of the ricotta cheese and mashed potatoes made for a super moist crumb and the corn flour added a very interesting flavor profile.

I was very happy with the flavor on this one and love the moist crumb.  The onions always go well with rye of course.

sigh.  Over proofed my bread again.

I keep getting into trouble with the long retard AFTER shaping.   It did not appear to have risen that much over night, so I let it sit out for 2 hours, then I reheated the oven for 45 minutes, and then I baked the bread.  Next time, I will cut the counter top bit down to 1 hour and will preheat the oven at the same time.  sigh

The good news is that the bread is lovely.  Nice open crumb. Lovely earthy flavor.

I did a 3 or 4 stage build:

Well, you know me - I can't resist a challenge! And thanks so much to @Mini Oven for issuing this one. I had more fun with this than I've had in a long time. :)

Here in Victoria (BC, Canada) we're not quite on the path of totality for the eclipse but will have the best view in Canada (about 90% totality). That's assuming clear skies, of course.