Having gotten to a good place with the Sourdoughs and the Wholemeal Sandwich Loaves, it felt like it was time to try something a little new. So far I have mostly relied on pans and the like to help shape the breads. But one area of baking I had not yet dove into was open hearth baking. Basically it's baking without the support of the pans to give your breads shape and structure. Bra-less Baking, if you will.

So for this weekends adventure, I virtually duplicated the Multigrain Sourdough from last weekend, but instead of using the Dutch Oven/Clay Pot to give the loaf shape, I worked on strengthening the dough with some simple stretch and fold kneading (as learned through Peter Reinhart's Artisan Bread Every Day) and with some cold fermentation in the fridge overnight. I used my loaf shaped proofing basket for the first time (I have circular and torpedo ones), and baked the loaf on one of our larger pizza stones. The dough for this particular bread is very wet, so it made for a bit of a challenge to keep the loaf's shape. But I managed to keep it together with a bit of care and creativity. The eventual rise was more of a spread, and yielded a somewhat fat and flat loaf. But with no loss of flavour and look.

I suppose if I were to do anything different, I would look to either use a mix of starter yeast and instant yeast, to help with the rise of the bread, and/or make a dough that was a bit less wet, although I would prefer to keep the dough as wet as possible, and work on the yeast first.

I also got reports back on the Multigrain Sandwich loaf from this week, now that it has been put into practical use for sandwiches and toast. It seems that it's a bit too sour (after all it's using sourdough starter), and a bit crumbly. So I think I will turn back to the trusty dry active instant yeast using the same recipe, and see what sort of results we get.