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Artisan bread is probably the easiest bread recipe ever. It literally takes no kneading, but it yields an airy, fragrant bread with a nice, crunchy crust and a soft, flavorful inside. Plus, it is very versatile as well because you can add all sort of additional ingredients to it, such as walnuts, chopped olives, fresh or dried herbs, sesame seeds or poppy seeds and even salami or some vegetables.

Prep time: 15 hours
Cook time: 50 minutes
Yields: 2 loaves

To start out the New Year on a different foot, we decided to do a near white bread since the girls love them the most and we were out of them.  The other added benefit is that we got to use up the last of the panettone YW SD levain left over at the same time.  Lucy hate throwing away left overs.

I followed Reinhart's recipe for "Basic Sourdough" and made 2 loaves (1 to give away to a friend).

I finally got some KAF bread flour which seems to have made a major difference and improvement (got good fermentation rises at all phases, and got a very nice oven spring).

1/8th of the flour is WW, and 1/8th is medium rye flour.

I'm watching my carbohydrate intake (am managing my weight ... have lost 20 lbs in the last year) ... so I had a very thin slice with butter - delicious! (although not sour, which is fine)

Made 2 of these for Christmas ... one for my family and one for my sister and her husband.

The pastry is a "Swedish Tea Ring" ... I know of a few versions of the recipe. I can post if there is any interest.

Crumb:

My wife and I had a quiet New Years day. Very mellow, except for dinner. My wife gets pretty excited when I make pizza.

I'm seeing more people, for various reasons, take up gluten-free (GF) eating.  I've always been hesitant about trying GF loaves because of head-scratching over the various gums needed to replace the gluten that's not there due to no wheat being used.

It has been a while since I posted, although I have been baking regularly.  For New Years I made a few breads and thought I would add my voice to those who have had wonderful success with David's posting of the SFBI Miche on TFL.  When I first started baking sourdough breads I was totally intrigued by the photo of a large miche on the cover of Reinhart's Bread Bakers Apprentice.  I spent months trying to master it, with only moderate success.  But an attraction to the miche loaf has stayed with me, and I real

Two formulas I've not tried before.

Renato Bosco Panettone

Renato Bosco maintains his madre in water which means it's less acidic and hence why his formula includes it at 50% in the first dough.