On 2004-12-09, Dick Adams > wrote:
>
> "Randall Nortman" > in message
> ink.net
> presented http://wonderclown.net/photos/bread.html
>
> (full-bodied, compact loaves with a complex constitution, seemingly
> arbitrarily so)
>
> Question: Why do you want to put all that stuff in your bread? Do
> you know that you can make pretty good bread with just flour, water,
> salt, and leavening?

I specifically set out with this experiment to make bread with a lot
of seeds and intact grains in it, because I like to bite into bits of
stuff. I also make plain old bread without chunks, but variety is the
spice of life. Part of the fun of baking for me is coming up with new
recipes and new types of bread.

Or perhaps you were referring to the milk powder, malt syrup, and oil?
Yeah, those are questionable additions. Will Waller (who also was
very helpful in getting the technique with the intact grains right)
already pointed out to me that the milk and oil are likely detrimental
in sourdough. I like the added nutrition of milk (in particular, the
protein), but I will do a test without these additives at some point
in the future. (But probably after "the season", because things are
getting hectic around here.)


> Well, I don't know how long you have been doing it, but, for beginners,
> the simple formula is a good one to start with. After that, almost anything
> else added to the dough makes a good result more difficult to attain.

I have been baking bread in fits and starts for something close to 15
years. The loaves I baked 15 years ago (in high school) were awful.
My friends called it by a name not fit to print, but they still
gobbled it up when it was hot out of the oven. (Teenage boys will eat
pretty much anything.) I first started experimenting with sourdough
about 3-4 years ago, gave it up for a couple of years (switching to
baker's yeast because I didn't have a lot of time to devote to
baking), and then resurrected my starter several weeks ago, shortly
before I began pestering you all with questions.


> Of course, you may be one of those with a cultural predisposition for
> doing things in most complex ways, so, if so, I apologize for such a
> bland recommendation.

I certainly am one of those people (though more by constitution than
culture), but I don't consider your suggestion bland. To the
contrary, it is rather exciting to start with nothing but the basic,
essential ingredients and still produce something with excellent
flavor.


> Your photo presentation is very good, and most interesting.

Thank you! I went through a brief photography phase a year ago or so
when I got a digital camera, and wrote myself some software for making
galleries like this. (I'm a computer geek by nature and training.)
I'm happy to offer the code to anybody who wants it, though it's not
very user-friendly, and to customize it you must be able to write and
understand the Python programming language.

--
Randall