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to share with  family and friends. Two traditional: Welsh Cakes, and Date-nut Pinwheels, and two newer: Chocolate-Chocolate chip-Chipotle-Hazelnut and Ameretta-Almond Biscotti. Thirty dozen total.

Happy Holidays to all,

David G

This is a continuation of my spelt brioche experimentation.  This time I used 50% AP flour, 50% spelt flour, 50% unsalted butter, 32% eggs, 20% yogurt, 16% palm sugar/sucanat mixture, 2.5% salt, and a little instant dry yeast.  I prefermented 20% of the flour in a liquid levain at 100% hydration using my rye SD starter.  I am pretty happy with the result.  It's a tangy bread due to the yogurt and liquid levain.  I think next time I can up the sugar level...  My total dough weight was approx 1200g, divivided between two 4.5" cube pullman pans.  The dough on

Holy oven spring Batman! This was essentially the same as my last pulla bake but used only YW levain to leaven the loaf. I also used only 30% bread flour and 70% AP. The dough felt quite a bit more extensible than just using strong bread flour. Yeast water makes for some mighty tasty pulla and sweet dough and the loaf volumes are truly astonishing to me!

I once again brushed on an egg glaze and sprinkled liberally with sugar, ground almond and chopped slivered almonds.

I've been baking a lot lately, as I try to master my Cadco oven.   Some breads come out better than in my conventional gas home oven, others not so  much.   The other day I made challah, and it came out better than ever.   Unfortunately I didn't take good notes, so I'm not quite sure how I baked it.   I did one six strand loaf and the other seven.   The seven was strangely flat and boring.   I guess I need a fancier braiding regime. 

Well, I haven't been active here in quite awhile, but I do still check in from time to time to see what people are baking and to just pick up some tips here and there.

But I baked a focaccia yesterday and wrote up the recipe to post for some folks on a couple of other sites, so I thought I might as well share here too, in case anyone is interested. I'm just going to put it up how I did on the other sites and try to fix up the formatting for how it works here. Here goes:

Notes:

Hey guys, 

With all the family here for Thanksgiving and then some personal parts replacements (my eyes are getting brand new lenses, the kind without cataracts.), I haven't been posting much. So, this is a catch-up on my last few weeks' breads.

Hamelman's Pain au Levain Delicious with the Lamb and root vegetables braised in merlot I made to welcome our arriving Thanksgiving guests - just to fuel them to help making Thanksgiving dinner, you know.

I was trying to get into the holiday spirit so I asked my wife what type of bread she wanted me to make next and she immediately asked for a chocolate chip Challah with cherries.

I decided to use a sourdough starter and followed the Coconut Yeast Water Challah formula I had made last year which came out very nice.  This dough is very wet and does not really allow for braiding, so if you want to braid it you should cut down on the water even though the overall hydration is only 68% most of it comes from the egg yolks.

Before I say anything that's going to totally appall some people and actually offend other people, I want you all to know that I really love this site, and seeing all your creations and reading about your experiences has inspired me to try many new delicious things. Thank you all!

Times are busy.  Went up to Portland, OR to see Pearl Jam for the holidays and ate some great foods.  With only a few days in the city and so much good food to eat I barely scraped the surface.  Some good mentions.  Fressen and German bakery was a hidden gem that I'd highly recommend.  Tabor Breads was wonderful and probably the best bread I got to try.  Tasty n Sons was an epic dinner.  

Anyone when i returned home my computer was broken and now its back up and runnin (just the power supply).