Mellow Bakers in June

A new month, a new set of breads for the Mellow Bakers Challenge (baking our way throught Jeffrey Hamelman's book "Bread"). Breads with very different characters this time. Let's take a look

1. Pain Rustique.

Take a look and what does it remind you off? Yes of course:Ciabatta. I think it's just the French version of ciabatta. Comparing this recipe and the one for ciabatta with poolish, almost twins, the ciabatta has a few percent more liquid, but that's hardly a difference. It's a good bread, holes and everything, so this one got a good mark.

2. Semolina Bread.

Now we really move to Italy with this one, such lovely fragrant and slightly yellow bread. I added more water, but that can happen as flours vary in the way they slurp up the water. A very short sponge, so that's handy too for the people that are not always reading the recipe the day before they want to start baking. Lovely bread.

3. Volkornbrot & Volkornbrot with flaxseeds.

As this kind of bread is only eaten by my husband and I still wanted to bake both of them, I halved the recipe and placed both of them next to eachother in the pullman pan. All in all I guess it turned out like it is supposed to look. Sort of square and dense. Sour smell and taste and probably very good for you. So I was happy with the result, as I admit I'm a bit scared baking these kinds of breads. I let it rest, wrapped in a tea towel, for a little over 24 hours before slicing and that went well. Sliced thinly and packed 4 in a bag, they were all frozen and by now (as I baked this a few months back) they are all eaten by our "roggenbrood" (= dutch for "volkornbrot")-lover. Yay for him too!

This was a very divers baking month and with all good results. Looking forward in seeing the other breads on the participants blogs and finding out what we'll be baking next month for the Mellow Bakers!