Four gold awards for four breads

Due to heavy involvement in one project I am recently not very active in writing at TFL because I really have no time. However, this dos not mean that I am not baking.  

Last weekend March 4-5 2017) there was a local bread assessment in Škocjan (Slovenia) organized by local Society  and I have submitted four breads for assessment. The final result was very good, I actually got gold awards for all four of them. Two of them got 79.2 points out of 80 possible points and were ranked on 2. and 3. place absolutely. The absolute winner was one lady's bread with olives which got all possible 80 points.

This time there was a special category opened for all sourdough breads. Actually this category included all breads which are not leavened with baker's yeast, like sourdough, yeast water, kefir, baking powder, soda, wine stone, ...  

All breads were prepared from 1000 g of flour (one of the assessment conditions) in the form of boule.

The type of breads I prepared for the assessment were:

1.) 20% whole grain wheat, 5% whole grain rye, 5% whole grain spelt, rest was bread flour type 500, oat flakes  20%, starter 20%@100% hydration, overall hydration with water used for cooking flakes was 110%. I also added seeds: flax, sesame, sunflower. Baked in wood fired oven. The upper part of a boule was coated with sesame seeds. Unfortunately the outlook was not as I wanted because of too much flour I have used for coating the linen. Score: 79.2 points

2.) 25% whole grain wheat, 5% whole grain rye, 60% wheat flour type 550 (German), 10% wheat type 500, 20% starter@100% hydration, overall hydration slightly over 70%, baked in Dutch Oven. Score: 79.2

3.) 40% whole grain rye, 50% high extraction wheat flour (85% extraction), 10% wheat flout type 500 (in starter), starter 20%@100%hydration, baked in wood fired oven. Score: 77.8 points

4.) "Pane di Altamura", 100% semola rimacinata, 15% starter@100% hydration, overall hydration 72%. Score: 78.3 points 

What I have learned:

1.) This time I was making dough with about 5% lower hydration than usually (around 68-73%) and the crumb had more even porosity without big holes what pleased the assessment committee.

2.) Experimenting when baking for assessment is strictly forbidden as it always go wrong. This was the case with coating one of the breads with sesame seeds.

3.) Always have a backup plan in case that the wood fired oven will be too cold to properly bake the second batch. I had to move one of the breads into my dutch oven to finalize bake as the wood fired oven was not hot enough to get decent crust.

4:) From the discussion with the president of assessment committee I got information that two of my breads would get all possible 80 points if the bottom of the bread would not have some brown spots (it was far from being burnt but the color of the bottom was not even). So in the future I must pay more attention to the temperature and move the bread slightly higher in my electric oven after a while. Also in my wood fired oven I must not start baking before it cools down to 240 dC.

Beginning of April there is a state level assessment and of course I plan to attend is as well.

Happy  baking, Joze