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What an interesting and tasty experiment. I usually don't  bulk ferment my dough but I decided to try it due to time and space constraints. I made the dough and did a couple s &f's q 20 min .then rest for 1 1/2 hrs then in the fridge it went. I removed it this AM and shaped cold. I always shape cold when I make Ian's buns and love the way the cold dough feels and handles. I made 3/650g boules. It is incredibly easy to shape and get the "free form" burst when the dough is cold as it doesn't really want to stick terribly well. Into the banneton and rising time of 2 1/2 hrs.

For the past few weeks I've been in my native homeland of New Hampshire visiting my folks. And  being in the north east in the early spring means maple sugar. Some of our family friends have a sugar shack and I went and visited and got some of the sap, One batch I made from full on raw maple sap, then the other batch was made with sap that had been run through their reverse osmosis machine. 

The full loaf in the title image is the one with plain sap 

Well, I kind of screwed up today, but did my best to make up for it.  When I was making the Gluten-free Farmhouse bread earlier, i prepared too much yeast because I thought I really messed up the bread dough, but it turned out that I didn't!  As a result, I quickly found the most simple recipe for yeasted French bread and threw it together in minutes and baked it this afternoon.  It was really good!  My husband liked the crust.  I could have done a much better job on the shaping, however.  I'll do better next time.

I am always looking for good gluten-free recipes, and I came across this one online by Ali and Tom of Whole Life Nutrition.  I did make a number of modifications to the recipe after the first time I made it, which I have listed below.  It is a very dense, heavy bread and uses ground chia seeds and psyllium husk as the gluten-like substances.

Being a pastry chef by trade, hazelnut is a fundamental ingredient in my repertoire. Yet it seems a bridesmaid to Walnuts in conventional bread making. While devising a baking menu for an upcoming job I decided to feature a hazelnut bread as my nut based loaf. The difficulty in using hazelnuts is that their flavor is semi subtle and must be exaggerated through other ingredients which in pastry is most commonly done with brown butter, caramel or an earthy chocolate.

/* UPDATE: Der deutsche Text ist am Ende dieses Beitrags */

Karin (Hanseata) pointed us to a blog event that is currently on, closing on April 17:

The challenge is an interesting one.

Work has kept me busy and away from posting as often as I'd like, but I'm happy to be able to share this recipe. These are completely amazing cinnamon rolls. They've conquered my heart, and I don't even really like cinnamon rolls. Except these.

Tang Zhong Milk & Honey Sweet Dough 

Well with David's strong suggestion to make this loaf after talking of the Miche in "Bread" I had to see.  I was mostly interested how this amazing loaf was mostly comprised of white flour.  I had to see.  I made 2 loaves @ 2 KG each.  I went with the original formula David mentions with just a couple small changes.  First Change was I made the Levain with all Central Milling T85 opposed to a mix of White/Wheat.  I decreased the toasted wheat germ to 2% (because I had this much on hand).

  This was supposed to be a high extraction whole wheat loaf but I'm having trouble milling my flour course enough to actually have much bran left to sift out.  So, instead I basically used freshly milled whole wheat and added some fresh whole rye flour along with some whole spelt and a whole bunch of caramelized onions.

My second venture into bread baking, guided by The Fresh Loaf Lessons. With today's loaf I want to try:

1.Using a preferment to use less yeast and lend more flavor to the bread.

2.Venturing from machine mixing by autolyse, so I'm not "kneading the beegeebers" for 10 minutes - kneading is the one reason why I've shied away from bread baking all these years. I'm lazy.

3.Getting a feel for the slap and fold method.