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Love this bread but I have a few questions for anyone out there who regularly bakes this delicacy. Nigella seeds in with flour at the beginning or sprinkled on during shaping? Butter, margarine or olive oil to enrich the dough during shaping? Saffron to colour the dough yellow or not? Bake hot & fast or cooler and more slowly with a lid? Enrich the dough with egg & butter or not? Egg wash to finish with a shine or not?

Oh my....that's about all I can say. The blue granite roaster is definitely the way to go , at least I will not be using my cast iron anymore. Look at that ear :) and caramelization.  I had extra ripe bananas and I remembered posts from Shiao - ping and txfarmer using bananas and SD. I read and read and came up with a formula.

My first bake of 2018. I'm glad I squeezed in a bake despite my busy schedule. I find it more therapeutic than ever! :) Last time, I baked bagels and I really loved them because they were so satisfying to eat. Due to the boiling process it gets before being baked, they really have a unique texture. I thought it will be similar to laugenbrot with a thick chewy crust but I was wrong. Its thin and crispy crust is also our favorite to date but my parents find the crumb too chewy for them so I thought of why not soften the crumb a little bit and maintain that unique crust.

Here is the link to my recipe, as requested by bread1965

https://www.dropbox.com/s/418xctpf74nxnrh/Multigrain%20loaf.xlsx?dl=0

Starter was refreshed for the Experimentation - the next step bake (posted on 17th January)  so I had allowed sufficient for this bake as well. 

Levain was built the night before and left at room temperature until 13:25 pm

I was intrigued with this recipe from foolishpoolish

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/7433/brioche-au-levain-recipe

Just before Xmas, a friend’s husband had a heart attack and needed a bypass. I remembered Lazy Loafer’s Heart Bread and decided to base my weekend bake on her recipe. Of course, my friend ended up with a couple of loaves.

Recipe

Ingredients:

250 g Spelt flour

200 g Selkirk Wheat (circa 1950 variety of wheat)

75 g oat bran

550 g unbleached flour

100 g multigrain flour

50 g ground flax

700 g water

21 g  pink Himalayan salt

40 g kefir

90 g rolled oats

Hey Guys,

90% Bread Flour

10% Whole Wheat

16% olives 

 21% Liquid Levain

2% Salt

86% Hydration

1 gram of dried Thyme per (1 kg of total flour)

1 Gram of oregano

The Stenciling is all in jest! thanks hope you like it

This took 4.4 hours of bulk ferment and proofed for 13 hours at 47F

It is the second time I bake a tight loaf of bread that has been shaped as a Batard and proofed overnight. whenever I take off the top lid from the double Logde iron skillet, the dough would have expanded and didn’t rise in volume ( see picture ) - can you help please ? What do you think I am doing wrong ?