"Boron Elgar" > wrote in message
...
> The bread making actually began Friday night...I have a lot of
> sourdough cultures that I nurture and then sometimes neglect. I have
> to "refresh" them to keep them alive, alive-o and that is what I did
> last week. By Friday night, they were so active, they were popping
> their Rubbermaid lids & shooting them across the room.
>
> I mixed up 3 separate batches to being the breads...One was based on a
> rye-based starter, one was based a starter that I got from a artisan
> bakery and one was a starter from god-only-know-where. I had planned 3
> separate types of breads...and so I needed 3 different bases for them.
> Each starter was mixed with flours of varying kinds and water, and
> left to ferment overnight.
>
> Saturday morning, after errands, I took the pre-ferments and mixed
> doughs for:
>
> 1)A lean-dough multi-grain bread, with regular flour, dark rye,
> rolled oats, spelt flour and coarse corn meal, water and salt.
>
> 2) A lean dough, artisan type sourdough that had regular flour and
> some semolina for a bit of color & crunch, and some water and salt
>
> 3)A rich dough that had flour, rolled oats, some butter, sour cream,
> milk and honey, and that was to be the basis for cinnamon-raisin
> bread..
>
> All three doughs were mixed up, kneaded, then put in the fridge about
> noon on Saturday.
>
> The proofing bowls were removed from the fridge at 8:30 am. By 10:30
> this morning, I started to made up the loaves, the multi-grain in
> willow baskets to get that neat design on the outside, the
> cinnamon-raisin in loaf pans (the dough was rolled into a rectangle,
> spread with a brown sugar and cinnamon mixtures, sprinkled with
> pre-soaked raisins and "rolled" into a loaf shape) and the plain
> artisan sourdough in long, free-from loaves (these can be tricky, as
> the dough is one of very, very high hydration.
>
> Ok...I can share the pictures, but I did not use any recipes at
> all......I just went by feel, aiming for the kind of crumb I
> wanted....the denser crumb of the whole grain, the open & holey
> structure of the artisan SD type, and the usual texture of a
> cinnamon-raisin loaf. This all varies by the ratio of water/liquid to
> flour and also how long it is allowed to ferment and rise.
>
> The cinnamon-raisin should have come out of the oven maybe 5 minutes
> earlier, but the internal temp was not quite where I wanted it. I will
> bake it at a lower overall temp next time, as it is a sweet dough. Mea
> culpa.
>
> One of the multi-grains is almost gone, one of the CRs will be kept
> out & the rest will be frozen when they are cooled down.
>
> http://i1.tinypic.com/mtum3l.jpg
>
> http://i1.tinypic.com/mtutnc.jpg
>
> http://i1.tinypic.com/mtvw2a.jpg
>
> Boron

Thanks for the wonderful pictures. There's nothing I like more than
pictures of bread-baking. I envy you with all your cultures going. It's
great inspiration.
Dee Dee