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Background:

Last Thursday evening I met up with Yozza, another resident of the eternally-just-unwrapped city of Perth, Western Australia, who has a wood-fired oven at his workplace. After some PM exchanges during which I expressed in pining tones that I would love to try baking my sourdough pizzas in a WFO, Yozza suggested a bake-off: he would bake some of his dark ale wholemeal/white bread with molasses and sprouted wheat, and I would bring along some SD pizza dough and toppings.

After watching the UK TV programme In Search of the Perfect Loaf, following the progress of baker Tom Herbert who goes on an epic quest for the perfect loaf, and so the Shepherds Loaf was born. Tom’s journey helps him to come up with an enormous, two kilo, white, spelt, sourdough loaf made using his family’s 55 year old sourdough, organic spelt flour from Somerset, Cornish sea salt and Cotswold water from a local spring.

OK, I'm going in. I've got the Glock, the BAD (Bad Ass Doberman) AKA Princess Lucy, and Chalupa the Chihuahua as reinforcement. Also in hand are sharp scissors and a 10" bread knife. Entering the house, I use all my senses trying to detect the CROB. I'm concerned that the soupy, pancake like batter of the sourdough converted cinnamon raisin oatmeal bread (CROB) has escaped it's container in the fridge and is hiding somewhere in the empty house.

Let's see...this bake went pretty much according to recipe and it ended up having a seriously low profile(3.75"thickest- 1.5" at it's thinnest). I don't know if the lowness of my bread's profile is acceptable! I wish I had written down more detailed notes on my previous Miche bakes(even though neither one of them had as high of a rye flour percentage as this one), in order for me to see how to augment my bake so that the loaf has just a tad bit more height.

I'd say this looks more like bagels.  The previous ones were a little too small.  4 oz are the right size.  I also used a homemade malt powder,  tried to sprout my own with wheat berries.  Soaked for 3-4 days.  There was a little white sprout, but somehow didn't like the ones in Dan Lepard's book on The Homemade Loaf.  But I went ahead to dry and grind it then.  I added in this ingredient, but still without malt syrup,  I substituted with brown sugar.  The colouring looks fine I guess.

Last night I made Reinhart's whole grain multi-grain struan, with home milled wheat flour and a mix of uncooked seeds.

Bread can be so beautiful...

I know this is not the perfect bread, and quoting Hamelman, "If the holes are big enough to hide a mouse, your shaping skills need some attention", but I love my bread anyway.

Ok, so I redeemed myself. After my soupy batch of about 20lbs of cinnamon oatmeal raisin dough was put to sleep in the fridge to figure out how to best go about dealing with it another day, I pulled out the soaker/starter for my volkornbrot. Threw them together with some flour and water. This is the first time making this. Also the first time working with my fresh ground flour.  Mini and I had discussed the idea this afternoon, AFTER I had already started soaking my quantity of flax seeds and rye chops. I fed the rye starter rye meal the night before.

...or what I was building rather than baking last weekend:

Next come the roof joists ...then the walls.  The result will be a 14' by 12' combination greenhouse and garden shed!

Brian