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Dear All, 

I am posting here aafew photos taken along the way of making a Russian Rye, procedure and formula as in the first recipe in my blog (there it's called Russian Rye, Andy's version (85% Hydration, preferment 167% hydration, 35% flour from preferment)):

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/25940/hussian-and-german-100-ryes-4-recipes

Here the rye sour ready to go:

Bonjour, everyone :^)

I'm back from Kyoto and in my first week, I've re-awakened my starter and am tonight attempting to make sourdough. I used 5 oz starter (nice and bubbly and active, 100% starter) 10 oz water and 15 oz white flour. The dough is really wet; I couldn't do stretch and folds because it was sticking to everything. So, I folded and kneaded in at least another cup of flour and it is retarding in the fridge under olive oil as we speak. It smells good but I am really out of practice.  I forgot to add salt until it was almost too late, but I sprinkled in about 1-1.5 tsp of salt while kneading.

The oven that was in our new house was pretty much the cheapest exposed-element electric that they could find when they did the kitchen remodel pre-sale. We replaced it with a Frigidaire FPEF3081MF, from their 'professional' range. It's my first glass-topped unit, and my first convection oven (sadly, no steam). While I still can't find the (in a box somewhere) stuff I need for breadmaking, I used it last night to roast some potatoes and carrots and a pork tenderloin. 

I don’t know why I sometimes push myself to the extremes, but I can’t resist having excess ripe sourdough, without putting it to good use. I have adopted a lazy method of feeding my starters prior to my weekend baking, and building it to a leaven similar to the ones used in Hamelman’s Bread. No planning involved as to which bread I’ll bake, and I often end up with an excess leaven when I decide to change my recipe at the last moment.

This was my third year to enter the county fair. I finally got somewhere with my baking. I'm not saying that I've got to where I want to be but I think I can at last say that I'm close to the end of the beginning. I haven't gotten that far with Photbucket this year.

I love the idea of a rustic "ploughman's lunch", so I thought I'd try to replicate the experience (or, at least, channel it) via a savoury bread.

I started with a beer-bread base inspired by Dan Lepard's stout loaf recipe, only using an ale rather than the stronger stout: