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This is the bread I made on Friday, I started off by soaking
1 1/2 cups organic oat flakes in boiling water and resting it for 30
minutes from there I added a cup of fresh milled whole wheat, 1 cup
water 1/2 cup milk 1 tablespoon raw sugar and 2 1/2 teaspoons of
yeast, 2 cups bakers flour, mixed well, rest 30 minutes added 2
tablespoon butter and enough bakers flour to make nice dough, kneaded
in DLX 6 minutes adding 1 1/2 teaspoons sea salt.
Removed from bowl, kneaded into a ball by hand, rest until double
plus, size, shape rise and bake, 400' 50 minutes.
qahtan

Since I'm a bread nerd, I have picked up a lot of gadgets over the years, but mostly have old favorites. I thought it might be fun to compare what tools we have and how we like them. It might also be helpful for newbies who are just adding to their collections.

So here's a "survey". Feel free to add to this if you think of more, I was just brainstorming here:

1. Mixer: Which mixer do you use, or are you a hands-only purist? :)

2. First Proof: Do you have a favorite bowl or container for rising doughs, preparing poolish, or saving sourdough?

3. Shaping Loaves: Do you use a scale for weighing ingredients or loaves? What do you use for dividing dough and shaping loaves?

4. Second proof: What are your favorite baskets, couches and pans for rising your loaves?

5. Baking: What kind of hearth stone do you use, tools for slashing laoves, and do you use a peel to transfer loaves into the oven? And ovens--what's your preference: Gas or Electric, convection, or do you prefer the weber grill? :)

Don't mean this to be serious (or a competition!) but have fun and show my your toys!  :)

I love sourdough bread.  And I find it fits my lifestyle better anyway.

I work at home. And with baker's yeast bread, I may forget that something is bulk fermenting and it over ferments. With my sourdough bread, I don't have to worry about it. I bulk ferment and proof in my basement at 70f. and I can forget about it for a few hours and not worry about it.

Today for the first time I proofed and then retarded in the fridge and baked early this morning straight from the refrigerator. It worked great, sourdough rye, came out wonderful.

Anyone else find that this fits their lifetstyle better?

--Richard 

So I had to refresh my two starters today (Clyde - 100% rye, and Gertie - white flour), and don't have time to bake tomorrow. I remembered reading in the Reinhart book that you can replace the pre-ferment in a rustic dough with the barm from a white flour - no need to feed and activate first. Hey, I'm game!

So here's the recipe, from The Bread Baker's Apprentice (still my favorite book!):

biga 2cp/10.8oz Fancy or extra fancy durum flour and unbleached bread flour, in any combination (such as 50/50 blend) 2 1/4cp/10oz Salt 1 1/2tsh/0.38oz Instant yeast 1tsp/0.11oz Mashed potatoes (optional) 1/4cp/2 oz Water, lukewarm (90-100F) 1 to 1 1/8cp / 8-9oz

So after refreshing Gertie, I had about 9.5oz of leftover barm. I topped it up to 10.8oz with bread flour, and I had what looked just like a biga! Lovely :)

I used 50/50 bread/semolina flour for the second ingredient.

The dough is a very wet, rustic dough. Here's what it looked like after about 5 minutes on the hook:

And after dumping it onto my very well floured counter:

The dough gets pulled and folded, then allowed to rest for 30 minutes. This gets repeated twice more before a 2-hour bulk ferment.

I'm currently in my second 30-minute rest! More pictures to follow...

-Joe