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We are still enjoying our extended visit here in Fort Lauderdale where we are seeing friends that we don’t otherwise.  Since many of them know that I like baking bread, I am getting requests to bring bread to their dinner parties in lieu of bringing the usual bottle of wine.  So for this dinner party I decided to bring milk rolls since they alway seem to go over well, but decided to try using my homemade red miso to amp up the flavour of the sweet potato and butter along with the cheddar cheese on top of the rolls.

About a dozen years ago, I developed a version of my San Joaquin Sourdough (SJSD) that was inspired by a type of Italian bread. While SJSD is a lean bread with mixed flours that is cold retarded before dividing, the Italian version was made with AP and Durum flour and was enriched with both sugar and olive oil. It was still cold retarded in bulk.

I have starter for free , I did a church event and have 6 left to give away. If you in my area. I feed my with organic whole and rye..

Still enjoying ourselves in Fort Lauderdale and starting to see friends gradually.  So tonight we are hosting a dinner party and the main course has some olives in it, a chicken saltimbocca so I decided I’d bake another Fougasse, my second time baking this bread for those who love crust.  It is quite fun to make, with very little effort or skill you can turn out a fancy looking delicious bread.  Even with my lack of artistic talent the bread baked up looking like a nice large monstera leaf.  If you like crust bread give this a go.

I have not made a bread in a long time using this technique which extracts as much flavor as possible from the flour.  I wanted to try it using almost 100% fresh milled flour.  Their is a tiny little bit in the seed starter but other than that it’s a combination of Barton Springs Mill Danko Rye, Yecora Gold Whole Wheat, Spelt and another companies Durum berries.

After the problems of the first attempt, I reread the feedback I received and here is my reworked version. 

First up, the starter.  It was looking good on the first refresh so I decided to stay with an all bread flour starter.  This means that that percentage of white flour in the dough is higher and and there is less whole wheat.   Secondly I started early in the day while the starter was fresh and bubbly. 

I’ve been wanting to make a bread with spent grains for a long time. My good friend Mike has become quite the home brewer and he graciously gave me some spent grains from his latest brew. He’s making a dark Stout type beer and the spent grains were a rich mahogany color full of flavor. They really ended up turning the dough a dark brown color reminicient of a pumpernickel style bread.

One of my plans in bringing my homemade miso down to Fort Lauderdale was to use it in a couple of bakes.  We were out of bread and needing more bread for toast and dinners.  I’ve wanted to bake a bit more lean breads but baked in my Pullman pan since that is what I prefer for sandwiches and toast.  This is what I came up with.  I have to say that dough seems to ferment faster down here.  I’m not sure why, it is my starter from Toronto so the only differences would be the flour or the water.

Down in Florida we are a bit more social than we are at home in Toronto.  We have friends we don’t see often so try to get together a few times each visit.  One of our close friends invited us over for dinner with his new partner so of course I offered to bring rolls to have with their Italian dinner.  Crusty rolls might have been better with Italian but I decided to use up some of my mashed sweet potato I have left over for some soft milk rolls.