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Hi Freshloafers.  It’s been a while since my last post, despite best intentions, and I decided that rather than put it off further, I thought I’d submit a bit of a “catch up” post that has a grab bag of quasi-recent bread experiments.  Forgive the lack of commentary or detail on process – happy to answer any questions, of course – but life & work have kept me busier than usual, so I haven’t had as much time for weekend baking or chronicling as I would like.

I don't have the book in front of me, but there's a single sentence in FWSY where Forkish describes serving a traditional French version of pain au chocolat in his bakery: Not the chocolate croissant with which I was familiar, but instead a simple slice of bread with a swipe of butter and a sprinkle of dark chocolate. 

That's what I served to my coworkers today, after a very long week of weather-related stress. 

4 Grain Sprouted Sourdough with Altus, Scald, Toadies & Porter - Going Darker

 Taking last week’s bake to the Darker Side seemed right up Lucy’s alley.  We doubled the whole grains to 61% and upped the hydration to 83%.  So, I’m happy it was twice as healthy!  This weeks scald/bake was a half hour longer and included Toadies too so it should be darker.

Started these guys at 7am on Wednesday, took them out of the oven a couple of hours ago.

I'm fairly happy with the shaping, and although I didn't get impressive grigne and no ears are present, I feel like the scoring was OK, I think other factors contributed to the low bloom. First time attempting an epi, made quite a mess of that, obviously need a lot more practice there!

This particular version of my San Francisco-style Sourdough, with 30% whole wheat, has become our favorite. I will confess that the version with mostly white flour does get made (and enjoyed), but we are enjoyed breads with increased whole grains more often, in recent years. The basic formula and procedures for the bread I made today can be found here: San Francisco-style Sourdough Bread with increased whole wheat flour

A few weeks ago, I mentioned to a coworker that I was interested in acquiring spent grains from local breweries. I'd read a few different sources on baking with spent grains, and a few were sort of intimidating (my apartment is tiny, so I don't know where I'd lay them out to dry!), but some just described dumping them in with the dough. Appealing to my experimental spirit.

A few days later, she appeared in my doorway with a plastic bag full of wet spent grains from Big Boss Brewing Company right here in Raleigh, North Carolina. 

I made these for my son's kindergarden based on Hamelman's oatmeal bread recipe

I calculated the weights in the formula based on 1kg bread flour
and ended up with 60 rolls of 46 grams each :)

The kids don't like any grains and "dirt" on their bread, so I gave up oatmeal decoration and
just brushed them with butter after the bake

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Hi, dear TFL’ers

 Wow, has it been a while! Just a quick update of what I’ve been up to during the last two months:

1 – I attended January’s Arts and crafts market. It was fun , but I only sold around 80 percent of my bread (18 total loaves).

Walnut Cranberry Sourdough. This was my first attempt at sourdough.

I used this recipe - http://www.theperfectloaf.com/walnut-cranberry-sourdough/

Looks like a few of us making this one this week! I made one last week but gave it away, I get to eat this one! Tasty flour blend.