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Every day, I pass a homeless lady who stands in the side-doorway of church that I pass by on the way to work.

I decided that I ought to give her one of my extra loaves of bread, and this morning I did so.  She was very appreciative and, dare I say, excited to be gifted the loaf.

I told her it took me three days to make it, and she said "Three days?!" so I explained it was a sourdough and she understood right away.

Here it was after proofing overnight in the fridge.

Another of the porridge breads from Tartine No. 3.  For this, the millet seeds for the dough are toasted and then cooked. Having absorbed all the water from cooking, they are added to the dough after the first couple stretch and folds (an hour into the bulk ferment).  Compared to the two oat porridge breads in the book (fermented and not), this one uses less of the "porridge" grains. I think it may have contributed to a lighter, airier loaf than the oat ones.

I have been in search for a light pumpernickel formule for quite sometime, until DAB sent me the one posted by our TFLer dmsnyder. You can find the original post here. 

below is the formula i used, which is basically the same as his but I have left out on Altus and did all the mixing n kneading by hand

I've just received a few pounds of organic sprouted red winter wheat flour and organic sprouted spelt flour. Anyone have any advice before I dive into it?

Hydration?

Gluten strength?

Flavor?

I'm excited to try it, but I'm still novice enough to worry that it will be a challenge.

This forum has been an inspiration and is full of great advice! Thanks!

Gail N-K

This was my second attempt at this loaf.  Intrigued by David's description of how good it tasted, I just had to give it a try.  My first go yielded a flat boule that was very, very sour and quite pale.  I let everything go on too long especially the final proof in the fridge.  Due to other commitments, it stayed in the fridge for almost 20 hours as opposed to the 12 that David recommended.

Well after seeing dmsnyder's post on J.H.'s 5 grain levain from "Bread" i had to give it a go.  I also thought it would be fun to finally follow  a recipe from a book (or not).  Since i couldn't get Cracked Rye I couldn't resist but make a small modification.  

To keep the same percentage of Rye in the recipe (9.2%) I just used some Rye Sour as a portion of the Levain.  In place of this I used some Bulgar in the soaker.  

Sourdough challah is a familiar subject on this site, and there have been lots of recipes discussed and shared, with Maggie Glezer's probably in the lead. My only reason for revisiting the theme is that my version of challah, a sourdough adaptation of Jeffrey Hamelman's straight-dough recipe in Bread, is a bit away from the mainstream. To be blunt, nearly everyone who tastes my challah—thankfully, not my family—doesn't know what to make of it at best.

Like most of my bread friends, I purchased Chad Robertson's new bread book, Tartine Book No. 3, back when it came out over the holidays, however, I only got around to baking from it fairly recently. In Book no. 3, Robertson builds upon his basic country bread formula he established in his first book,Tartine Bread, with a focus on whole grain baking.

When I got more serious about baking several years ago, I created my own spreadsheets (or "breadsheets" as I like to call 'em) where I kept accurate track of formula tweaks, timings, etc. Over 200 sourdoughs, ciabattas, mixed grain pan loaves, pizzas, flatbreads, etc. 

Nowadays, even though I still weigh my ingredients, I "eyeball" things much more, and I rarely write my outcomes down....probably because for the most part, the outcomes come out consistently well. I haven't been baking a ton of breads lately, but my recent go-to's are: