I’m excited. Don’t worry, I will take a million pictures. Ohh, I can’t wait!

I love the game bejeweled and I love a good romantic story. Check this out: Bernie is one of my coworkers!

the dough	the oven

This week I tried my hand at half white/half whole wheat sourdough bread. Really, it was more of a 3/5 to 2/5 split, since I made the sponge with white starter and white flour and then added 2+ cups of whole wheat flour in the second stage of mixing the dough. The other new area of experimentation was in the oven. The small tin you see there was for boiling water. Many professional bread ovens have steam injection and I wanted to see what the effects of some moisture would have on the bread. They were many.

plain, before baking	with caraway seeds, before baking

Big bread! The loaves definitely expanded more than they’ve been with pure dry heat. The crumb was moist and the crust was beautifully golden brown yet much softer than previous breads.
Here’s a shot of the loaf with caraway seeds, sliced.

I started the sponge late Saturday night, added the second round of flour and kneaded it before heading to the gym on Sunday morning. When I got home I shaped the loaves for their final rise and baked later that afternoon. After an excruciating cooling period (I wanted to rip in to the bread as soon as I pulled it from the oven), we had panini sandwiches for dinner with the plain sourdough, fresh mozzarella, and homemade pesto from the freezer. Delicious. Thankfully there’s leftovers of all the ingredients so I might get another treat for dinner tonight.

I had a wonderful time in Belgium. We visited with family, ate delicious things, took a tour of an old, family-run beer brewery and visited Ghent. Midway through the trip I started to get a sore throat and by the time we were on the flight home, I was full blown sick. The first couple of days back home were really rough and I got a lot sicker before I got better. I can’t remember the last time I was this sick. Now I feel ok with just an occasional cough but I still have almost no speaking voice. Thankfully I don’t have too many meetings this week. I figured that it wasn’t a great idea to bake while I was sick but I did manage to feed the sourdough starters. Perhaps I’ll do some baking later this week.