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I hope this is ok to do this as I can't find the posts I wanted to add these too as I am new here.  Yesterday I made these breads, a yeasted dough cottage loaf, following Elizabeth David's method (first time I have ever baked a loaf from a cold start!)  and the pain de sielge d'auvergne, I think its lineage goes as follows, Daniel Leader, LeadDog and Mick of Bethesdabakers, thank you all for this recipe -  and my usual Pain de Campagne.  

I hope this is ok to do this as I can't find the posts I wanted to add these too as I am new here.  Yesterday I made these breads, a yeasted dough cottage loaf, following Elizabeth David's method (first time I have ever baked a loaf from a cold start!)  and the pain de sielge d'auvergne, I think its lineage goes as follows, Daniel Leader, LeadDog and Mick of Bethesdabakers, thank you all for this recipe -  and my usual Pain de Campagne.  

Today, finally, I got some bloomin ears!  

I've been playing with Susan (Wild Yeast) Norwich Sourdough and Floyd's San Joaquin sourdough on this site. I found the first too firm and sour, the second too slack and not sour enough, so I worked out my own formula...a happy marriage between the two.  And lo and behold---ears for the first time ever (in a dough not cooked in a dutch oven).  As it happens, I donated the bread for a friend's dinner party so no crumb shots.

When I started this quest to improve my baking skills, about one year ago, my goals weren't very specific. "Get better at bread baking" was about the best I could do. And "find help" was about as refined as I could codify my approach. Fortunately, I stumbled upon The Fresh Loaf early in my search for that help. I feel I've come a long way in that one year. TFL's members and guests are my inspriation, the helping hand I reach to first, the friends who share my best looking loaves and worst mistakes. I also search far-afield, but my roots are here, still shallow, but growing.

As I have been nurturing a white flour offspring of my usual rye starter I thought i'd give it a test bake with a 100% Strong White loaf before using it with some expensive french flour result was fine and as I add very little salt it tasted like a salt free Tuscan bread i've had in the past. Not much sourdough flavour though. The other loaf is my 2nd bash at Dan Lepards excellent walnut loaf but this time I ommitted the dried yeast and did a 100% sourdough version. It worked fine and I had seen other TFL members had tried this.

Many years ago our family lived in Singapore and I had a personal trainer.  Singapore is a young, vibrant society where sports may not be a big thing but going to the gym is popular.  I still remember that on the first day I looked around my gym and felt daunted by what I saw.  At the end of my first session, I asked my trainer how often I would have to train to look like her.   I like my trainer dearly, she is great; she said, "Oh, just three times a week!" 

I made these today with a chef.  This recipe was meant to go into a bread machine,  which of course,  the machine is me.  I made this all by hand. I tried 2 things today.  1 was to cover the loaf with a claypot to bake,  and another stay in the claypot to bake.  Of course it turned out that the one that stayed in the claypot got a nicer crust - golden brown.

Hey All,

Just wanted to tease you a bit.  I don't have pictures yet, but here is the recipe for something I will call the "Everything Levain".  I pretty much had all this stuff laying around in my kitchen, so I wanted to make a bread using all of it...  Here is the recipe below.  I will post pictures later this weekend.

Today was an exciting day- I almost kissed and hugged the UPS delivery guy, since he brought me my coveted package of food grade lye! A few days ago I finally received Hamelman's "Bread"book and was very eager to try out his pretzel recipe. I had read some good things about it on a German blog, and sicne my one and only pretzel makign attempt a few years ago, was HORRID, I had high hopes for this one.