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Being a pastry chef by trade, hazelnut is a fundamental ingredient in my repertoire. Yet it seems a bridesmaid to Walnuts in conventional bread making. While devising a baking menu for an upcoming job I decided to feature a hazelnut bread as my nut based loaf. The difficulty in using hazelnuts is that their flavor is semi subtle and must be exaggerated through other ingredients which in pastry is most commonly done with brown butter, caramel or an earthy chocolate.

/* UPDATE: Der deutsche Text ist am Ende dieses Beitrags */

Karin (Hanseata) pointed us to a blog event that is currently on, closing on April 17:

The challenge is an interesting one.

Work has kept me busy and away from posting as often as I'd like, but I'm happy to be able to share this recipe. These are completely amazing cinnamon rolls. They've conquered my heart, and I don't even really like cinnamon rolls. Except these.

Tang Zhong Milk & Honey Sweet Dough 

Well with David's strong suggestion to make this loaf after talking of the Miche in "Bread" I had to see.  I was mostly interested how this amazing loaf was mostly comprised of white flour.  I had to see.  I made 2 loaves @ 2 KG each.  I went with the original formula David mentions with just a couple small changes.  First Change was I made the Levain with all Central Milling T85 opposed to a mix of White/Wheat.  I decreased the toasted wheat germ to 2% (because I had this much on hand).

  This was supposed to be a high extraction whole wheat loaf but I'm having trouble milling my flour course enough to actually have much bran left to sift out.  So, instead I basically used freshly milled whole wheat and added some fresh whole rye flour along with some whole spelt and a whole bunch of caramelized onions.

My second venture into bread baking, guided by The Fresh Loaf Lessons. With today's loaf I want to try:

1.Using a preferment to use less yeast and lend more flavor to the bread.

2.Venturing from machine mixing by autolyse, so I'm not "kneading the beegeebers" for 10 minutes - kneading is the one reason why I've shied away from bread baking all these years. I'm lazy.

3.Getting a feel for the slap and fold method.

After reading a post by Ian writing about building a bread that calls our own, this idea strikes me and I decided I am up for this challenge. The only requirement for the challenge is following the ingridient listed in his blog 450 g (90%) 550 wheat flour 50 g (10%) rye flour 10 g (2%), salt Yeast and / or yeast Water

The first loaf did get a pretty good oven spring but I wonder if the scoring wasn't deep enough? Because, I feel like it could have been better. The second one, the one with the three scores, I think looks a little prettier. Anyways, I'm proud of myself! My starter is about 2.5 - 3 weeks old, I got the recipe off TFL, and it worked like a charm!

I used a combo cooker similar to the one mentioned in Tartine Breads, suggested by the author and by one of the regulars here on TFL. I followed the recipe to a "T". 

Yesterday, I baked the "Finnish Rye" from the SFBI for the second time. It is a delicious bread, although what makes it Finnish and why it's called a rye, since it has less rye than either white or whole wheat flour, remains mysterious. I described how I made it in my previous post ("Finnish Rye" from the SFBI.