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Hello to everybody. I want to share with you some pictures of these Romanian little sweet breads we make for the 9th of March. The dough is brioche like, but maybe sweeter, the same dough we use to make the traditional "cozonaci" (similar to panettones maybe), the ritual sweet breads we make for Christmas and Eastern.

Today I baked off this fennel&date sourdough, 

To make the levain I mixed 10g 100% hydration chef with

                     20g whole rye

Hiatus goes well but I did a small bake so i can gift a few loaves to my farmer friends this week.  Many moons ago I found a recipe for a "Poilane" styled loaf that sounded good and fiddled with it at work.  Do to limitations at work adjustments were made and an approved bread resulted.  We call it our "Whole Wheat Sour".  VWG and commercial yeast are among quite a few changes to make this bread come about. It's 50% whole grain (29WW/11Rye/10Spelt) and rolled in poppy seeds.  It's actually a nice sandwich bread with a finer crumb.

In 1824 "The Virginia Housewife" by Mary Randolph was published.  It contained a recipe for Soda Cake.

Dissolve half a pound of sugar in a pint of milk; add a teaspoon of soda, pour it on two pounds of flour--melt half a pound of butter.  Knead all together until light.  Pour it in shallow molds and bake it quickly in a quick oven."

I have not tried the recipe above. 

I did bake this one last night.        

I have changed the feeding of my levain. I now feed it 1: .5: .5 every 24 hours. It has been a week now. The bake this morning produced a house full of nice sour smells. I tasted this loaf and still no tangy bread. This bulk fermented at room temp then went into the fridge overnight for final proofing. Im happy with the results. A nice crunchy crust and soft crumb. I would like to have a more sour flavor to it. Im thinking of increasing the levain in the dough. My levain sits at room temp and this time of the year is around 65 degrees.

I love using this 36 hour method to make bread.  It takes a little planning but once you figure that part out it's pretty easy.  I have yet to have a bad result from this method unless you count the baguettes that got stuck to my peel and fell into my oven, but we won't go there!

I actually baked this bread on Monday but since this week has been a blur due to me starting a new job on Monday and adopting a new apprentice on Sunday I've had my hands full!

Crust is a roasted onion sourdough with turmeric and quinoa

Sauce is home made

Toppings: Pepperoni, mushrooms, black olives, sweet red peppers, green onions, sliced tomatoes and a shredded Italian Blend cheese.

The recipe may be found in my previous blog.

I belong to several bread baking sites, and on one of them this was the Bread of the Month. The recipe can be found here: http://www.hearthbakedtunes.com/2014/01/pain-au-levain-with-caramelized-onions.html

To this recipe I added one tablespoon of turmeric, and one cup of pre-cooked Aztec Red Quinoa. It made a wonderful aromatic, colorful bread that had a mildly exotic flavor.

I made one large loaf, a mini loaf and a pizza. Good stuff, give it a try.

Before I start out:  Credit has to given where it's due and the following post by David inspired me to give this a try.  His description works perfectly and is all you need, really, I'm just going to write out my version of it.

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/36635/turning-100-hydrated-sourdough-starter-crisp-waffles

There was a recent post (which I cannot seem to find) that discussed a cover that went over the baking stone and had a hole for injecting steam. The steam generator appeared to be a Bissell home steam cleaner.