Leavenworth County Fair Results and some gratuitous goat pictures.

Tuesday morning, I rolled out of town to enter my loaves at the Tonganoxie, KS County Fair grounds. Detracting from my usual oblivious confidence was the fact that I had baked with my newly rebuilt starter, one that had been percolating away on the counter rather than being kept in the fridge. The flavor is acceptable, even better than it's foundation but it wasn't as predictable in behavior. Even so, I was going with the flow of it because I wasn't baking for the paltry prize money, just the fun of posting brag shots for my fellow bread bakers and the diminutive ribbons. It wasn't work at all.

This is my Horiatiko Psomi, a Greek "Rustic Bread". While researching Greek breads, I found a recipe that used dry yeast and figured that I could do a sourdough version. In fact, I already had done so a few times without knowing that it was a Greek recipe. My particular tweak on the recipe was to use some white whole wheat flour to add the color and character to the appearance of the crumb. There's an Italian version of this bread whose name translates to "olive oil bread". This particular loaf was a 25% WWW version. I've gone up to 33% WWW and used an oiled 8" pie pan to bake a boule that is very cool looking. It's a very good bread, fit for family and friends. I'll have the recipe posted sometime before the end of the month so stay tuned for further advancements.

This second loaf is a sourdough. This had a 90% bread flour/5% rye/5% WWW makeup for flour. I was told by a junior judge that it had been up for consideration for bread division grand prize. Points were deducted for the holes in the crumb. WTF? Anyways, it lost to a most excellent cinnamon roll that could add weight on your waistline by just looking at it. It's hard to feel slighted when the competition is that tough. I think that next year I'll enter my Sourdough Kansas Pioneer Bread as way to overcome the master judge's preference for a tighter crumb. It's also an uncommon style which may be an advantage. I have the next twelve months to work that one out.

So what's with the goats you may ask. I like goats as a subject. I'm not interested in owning a goat but they do appeal to my amateur photographic sense of humor.

I'm still working on finishing the Anadama Bread formula but it's close. The Psomi formula will be posted after that. As for the sourdough, I don't think there's anything too special in it but if requested, I'll post a thumbnail sketch of it for folks that know how to flesh it out. It's basically a pain au levain with 20 g of Heartland Mills Golden Buffalo WWW in the flour.

Comments, humor, and questions are welcome.