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I've used Cairnspring Mills, which I'm plowing through right now. I use Sequoia for my 11-12% flour and Trailblazer for T85. Both are fantastic. If I had to live with only one "white" flour, it would probably be Trailblazer. But I'm interested in trying the Carolina Ground T85 for comparison. Shipping is a bit cheaper for Carolina Ground since it is regional.

Cairnspring Mills This quote intrigued me enough to queue up Cairnspring Mills for a try...

Another book I got into last night is Bread Book by Chad Robertson (of Tartine Bakery). No mention of Desem, but very deep discussions of how understand the effects of various controls on levain, salt... There are way too many books attempting to make bread "easy"; he's established enough to just say all his thoughts without concern as to whether we can keep up. They're Michel Suas level, but while Advanced Bread and Pastry by Suas is professional training and needs to fairly represent the consensus, Robertson is free to have an opinionated artistic vision. One example takeaway: Of course many of us are comfortable and successful maintaining a sourdough starter, and that assertion says more about our positive outlook on life than whether there's room to improve. I'm getting that someone handed me a recorder and I'm using it as a drumstick, while the Chad Robertsons of the world are playing standup bass. They're smelling and/or tasting their starter at every juncture, and rather than blindly imposing a schedule on their starter, they're tweaking hydration, temperature, and seed ratio (how much starter to carry over) so the starter ripeness peaks on their desired feeding schedule. Imagine instead we were ripening goat cheese, and dropping chunks into milk for the next generation. Overripe cheese will nevertheless inoculate the milk, and one can hope to catch the process sooner next time. But we're creating evolutionary pressure that favors flavors we don't want. This is the difference between dog breeding and leaving one's dogs intact. You get dogs either way, but...

I'm interested to hear the results of these experiments. I'm planning an order of Carolina Ground flours, but first, I need to work down some existing stock. I plan to start my desem this weekend, milling some of my hard red wheat stock. Hopefully, I'll join the desem fun in about two weeks. Oh, and yes to slap and fold. It does take effort, but the gluten structure builds quickly. I had been doing Rubaud method with high hydration doughs, but slap and fold is faster and hurts my hand much less.

@tekobo - Proof of sourdough crumpets!

I have another book I overlooked: The Bread Builders: Hearth Loaves and Masonry Ovens by Alan Scott and Daniel Wing. Alan Scott was Laurel Robertson's friend and mentor to Jennifer Lapidus (Southern Ground). Desem bread is featured, and technical discussions rival those by Suas in Advanced Bread and Pastry (whose commercial orientation skips Desem). Of these, I want to work through every recipe I can from Southern Ground. Shown is North Carolina Sourdough, to try the '85' flour from her mill. Technically this was a pitch that turned into a passed ball, for so many reasons, but it tastes so good that we want to make it again right away, to see if we can figure it out. My new aspiration is to figure out Richard Bertinet's slap and fold technique for kneading bread. I need more gluten structure with less effort. It's harder than it looks, which is evident in the videos where someone else picks up the same dough, and can't skit across it like a waterbug.

Very true- whereas in Australia, being an immigration nation, most people cook all sorts of cuisine in their weekly routine... and no one gets too precious about anything food related, which is great.

I do live in California. In a little community at about 3,000' - 3,200' elevation. Heck we got over 7' of rain this season.

He does, just north of Napa Valley. They've just had crazy weather all year now. Torrential rains and lots of snow.

Aha! Finally found the MSR poster. It was @Forrest. Linked here to keep all pot smokers in synch.

Great looking paella @remi! I love paella but don't think I dare try and make some for our Italian friends. They love food but the Venetians think that Tuscan food is foreign let alone trying to impose an import from Spain!

For some reason I thought you lived in California Paul. Obviously not with those temperatures!

I use 100% extraction einkorn for a simple loaf made with yeast. Delicious. P.S. Beautiful proofing cradle. Nicely done.

Hurrah! I've got my foccacia mojo back. I realised that while I use bread flour in the UK, the flour available in Italian supermarkets is "flour for bread". I am guessing the latter has less gluten and so when I went for a long 12 hour rise my dough just collapsed into a wet puddle. Until I find other, better flour I have restricted the initial proof to one hour and got good results on my 16 KK. Cooking tips - you need a hot dome and a pizza stone to get the desirable crunch on the base and light crisp on the top. I let the KK dome heat soak for an hour with nothing in the KK and then I added in the grate and stepping stone shield. A pizza stone would have been better and I will get one for next time. In the meantime, we all enjoyed this with our chicken dinner last night. IMG_4929.MOV

Nice toy Mac. A bit expensive though...

@tony b this stainless steel comes up clean very easily in the dishwasher and also with a short soak in soapy water. PBW is worth the soaking time and cost when it comes to getting grill grates nice and clean but I don't find that I need it for things like rotisserie forks.

Sounds like a great evening is in store for you, Tony.

Happy Cinco de Mayo, everyone! Nice day here, I should be grilling something, but I've thawed out some al pastor that I stashed in the freezer from the last time I made it. So, margaritas and al pastor tacos on the deck for dinner tonight! 🥟 🍹

Wow, what a great paella cook. It looks sooo tasty and sounds like a wonderful outside cook.

36°F and snowing here. Brought my theremeters in. Good looking cook!

I usually cook paella inside, but when I’ve got some time it is so much nicer on the KK. It was a beautiful autumn evening here, and kids were sorted- so it was the perfect time to cook tonight’s paella on the KK with some post oak for smoke. Originally paella was cooked on a pan over fire, so it feels right. Simple one tonight with chorizo, chicken, Roma tomatoes and green beans/ flavoured with saffron, paprika, stock and rosemary from our garden. Spicy pimenton in the adult one. I also love cooking the whole thing outside as you set up your ‘mise en place’ and then just relax. I’m smokey as all hell though, so need a shower. Nevertheless it was so so good- worth the extra effort.

I just searched for Desem in recipes indexed by Eat Your Books. The three books that come up are Flower Power, The Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book, and Southern Ground. This of course misses out-of-print books like The Bread Book by Thom Leonard, but at least we haven't missed anything obvious.

For today's Desem bread I made a proofing cradle from wood. I'm at the limit where my dough will sploof out into flat bread. A classic proofing basket is already wider than the wood frames I've been using for years. My frames had no bottom, but now I want to finish proofing in the fridge. For flavor, and as a bonus so the loaf better holds its shape. So now I needed a bottom. There are gaps by the four corners (which is fine for a proofing basket) so that wood expansion doesn't crack the box. Wood responds to changes in humidity by expanding across the grain. The poster child here is a beginner woodworker who makes cutting boards for gifts, and mixes end and side grains. Their boards crack. If one studies drawer construction, the bottoms float to avoid this issue. I prefer a chunkier solid proofing cradle, for thermal mass. You'd think my design would be everywhere, but I've never seen it before. In the same spirit as my artistic tirade above, this box uses my favorite cheater joinery. One shouldn't glue end grain without further support. People who understand wood believe that a hand cut dovetail joint displays the pinnacle of craftsmanship, even though box joints are stronger. People who make box joints tend to use jigs, then they look like every commercial box you've ever seen. What I do is plan and dry assemble my joinery using cabinet screws, then glue using the screws for clamping. Once the glue dries, I remove (and reuse) the cabinet screws, and replace them with Miller dowels. I then sand further and finish with Tried & True Original Wood Finish polymerized linseed oil and beeswax, which is food safe. My box is shown sunning in our yard, so the bread won't taste like linseed oil. This is dead simple joinery that I'd recommend to any casual woodworker. My friends who don't judge art by difficulty, or who are simply oblivious to measuring difficulty for wood joinery, love this style of construction.

I added her Daily Desem, which is about the same hydration. Yes, she calls for "full" extraction white and/or red whole wheat flours in the two recipes. Perhaps some people actually use 100% extraction flour? I put mine through a coarse sieve, ending up with 95% extraction, which can (nearly) handle 90% hydration. I'm going to drop a few percent at a time to see what happens.

Interesting. Is that 73% hydration with 100% extraction flour? That seems very low for whole, unsifted flour.