Slave to fashion

I'm nothing if not a slave to fashion, so with a three-day weekend in hand I thought I'd give dmsynder's version of the SFBI miche a try. 

I followed the recipe pretty closely as printed.  The flour was King Arthur Bread mixed with 15% King Arthur Whole Wheat.  I did use the wheat germ, and also about 20 g of rye flour.  I probably ended up with a little more water (20-30 g) due to not reading quite far enough ahead in the ingredients list.

I used a large stainless collendar to do the proofing.  This wasn't entirely successful as the very top (bottom during proofing) of the loaf stuck as I was transferring it to the peel.  This despite a thick layer of flour, but after sitting in a plastic bag in the fridge overnight that layer had probably absorbed a lot of moisture.  I really need to order some large bannetons from SFBI.

I followed dm's recommendation for the bake:  15 minutes at 525 deg.F; 45 minutes at 420 deg.F with convection.  Here's the baked loaf:

and the sliced loaf.  We could only wait 2.5 hours instead of the recommended 4, but the result was one of the best breads I have ever made.  And not really much work!

sPh