Country Loaf

 Hi, I haven't been on here for a while; our temperatures are slightly cooling in Brisbane so it seems worth ramping up the baking a bit.

This weekend I had a go at making the "Thom Leonard's Country French Loaf" (from the Gleezer book). I've never tried a loaf anywhere near this size (about 1.8kg after baking), but the two loaves turned out really well. Suddenly realised I was out of white flour, so the flour combo was a bit odd:

- Preferment made with the last of my bakers flour and some rye.

- 500g Atta flour (per loaf, I had a 1kg bag lying around)

- 250g sieved wholemeal flour to remove the bran and simulate high-extraction.

- 250g fine semolina, to make up the quota

- some rye

Fed the sourdough culture Saturday afternoon, and made the preferment late Saturday night - it was looking great on Sunday morning. Made the dough Sunday morning, hand kneaded with the French Fold. It had about 3.5 hours for the first rise (with a couple of stretch/folds in the first half hour), and a good 3 hours or so for the final rise. Baked the 2 loaves in the oven at the same time, with a pizza stone on each shelf - the oven was pretty full! Happy with the result, it has loads of flavour:

Cheers,

Mick, Brisbane