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Yay, The FWSY Country Brown turned out beautiful! I did fudge the recipe a bit. I cut down on the initial hydration and then added water back in when I was happy with the consistency of the dough, so not sure of the final hydration but the dough was very soft and stretchy. I used fresh hand-milled stone-ground flour for the whole wheat portion (about 38% overall) so I wasn't sure how much water it would absorb. The grain was hard red spring wheat from a local farmer, and the flour smelled wonderful!

In the spirit of the holidays I've been experimenting a little with enriched sourdough breads. A couple months ago I adapted a TFL formula from txfarmer for sourdough pumpkin hokkaido milk bread. I really love the texture of this style of bread, and have found that if I use the stiff levain quite young (6-8 hours), the resulting tang is barely distinguishable. (If I want more of a tang I'll use the levain when it's around 10-12 hours old.)

My super wet dough looked SO nice and bubbly going into the oven! But somewheres along the line, all the bubbles got up and left...

Can't find my camera, but the house is in an uproar as we re-arrange for the holidays and try to pare down. Too many decades of accumulation...

Well I now have baked through a bag of 00 flour and absolutely love the pizza crust it makes! Of course the two grocery stores in my small mountain town no longer carry 00 flour. Fortunately I found an on-line source here in Canada to mail order 00 flour: gourmetwarehouse.ca.  Whew!

The dough for this pizza had been refrigerated for at least 5 days and still made an excellent result. I have taken a page out of Ken Forkish's book and finish baking the pizza under the 500F broiler which chars parts of the crust and finishes things off nicely.

A bread with semolina is like a cake. It is really delicious!

Last week I tried my hand at the Hamelman Semolina Levain bread with 125% bread flour liquid levain.  With semolina coarse grain #1 used instead of the powdery durum, for experimentation.  And it worked out, mostly just fine.  But the flavor just wasn't grabbing me.  Hence take 2 here has a few changes, while keeping everything else the same.  

I decided to do another bake with a higher hydration so used 775 grams of flour with 600 grams of water so 77% hydration and really pleased with the results. It resulted in a softer lighter crumb with various sized holes. All in all a delicious tasting bread and texture. This novice baker is feeling happy!

Since I baked earlier in the week, I decided to simplify my weekend and make a yeast bread that would not tie me to the kitchen for most of the day. Flipping through FWSY, I settled on the 50% Wholewheat with Bigga. 

My simple favorite: Norwich SD made w T65 and Rye (~10%).  Spontaneous compliments from my hubby, son and future daughter in law.

Okay, so I’m 3 days late for homemade bread day, but this is the soonest I could get a loaf baked this week.

My last bake was a butternut squash loaf, and I really enjoyed it. This time I wanted to try something a little different.

Formula: