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The plan was to return some sort of normalcy to my baking this weekend. I was going to find a nice formula, dust off my scales and bake a loaf that I could actually say whats in it. .

It didn’t happen that way. I was running late and I needed to start the first stage of my levain build before I left for work so I ended up just throwing together some flour, water and starter. I think the last couple of bakes gave me the confidence to know that it’ll all work out.

Hello,

lately I've been having issues with my crumb. I haven't changed anything in my baking process.Flour, temps, leaven or folding is all the same. The only difference is the season.

As you can see, the top part of my loaf has a very large air pocket. This doesn't happen all the time and mostly with larger loafs (3,5 Lb)

This is an adapted redo of last week's loaf where I put way too much water in the dough. Changes were to add some leftover local organic yogurt and to only use toasted black sesame seeds as an add-in. So this is the recipe:

50 g toasted black sesame seeds

100 g yogurt 

567 g water

578 g unbleached flour 

87 g Spelt flour 

One of my earliest food memories is of eating a delicious, buttery Naan, al fresco on the patio, somewhere in an outdoor cafe in an Indian city, probably Mahabaleshwar or one of the stops on the way there from Pune, when I was just 8 years old. I can still taste it today. My senses were enchanted by this unexpected delight, both familiar and yet different to the breads of my American youth.

We are off to a BBQ tonight so decided to try out making Fougasse.

I used Paul Hollywood's recipe but made totally by hand.

500 g strong flour

10 g fine salt

7 g instant yeast

 Mix in large bowl and add 350 g tepid water and 2 tbspn olive oil.

Mixed by hand, added 1.5 tspn each finely chopped thyme, sage and Rosemary (on light side as hubby not so keen on rosemary in particular)  then did a lot of slap and folds/ stretch and fold and did get a window pane (with SD I don't usually bother).

Added a full diced jalapeno to this mix along with about 1/4 cup of canned corn kernels. Sorry no fresh corn to roast her at this time of year. I will double both the corn and pepper next bake. The additions make a delicious bread!

Happy baking! Ski

Lucy really went to work this week to come up with a bread that would fit the Oriental Pullman pan perfectly – with the lid on!  A more complex kind of bread so she didn’t specify sprouting the whole grains so we got off a bit easy this week.  Every time I turned around she was pulling put another grain, seed or nut long hidden away that pantry she guards with her life.