The bread's starter is a "rewena", made a rfermented mixture of mashed potato mixed with honey and strong bread flour. Being a child of the universe, I took it upon myself to use a mixture of strong bread flour, durum atta (finely milled whole wheat flour) and a little wheat bran. This is how the rewena looked after 24 hours. I was a little alarmed that there were a) no bubbles and b) little black dots.
This is how the rewena looked after 48 hours. Clearly the alarm about the lack of bubbles was mislaid. I decided to pretend that the black dots were harmless as well. (T tasted one and didn't keel over....)
The bread is supposed to have a pattern stencilled on top. Before putting the stencil on, I sprayed the loaf with water. (This was a mistake.)
The stencil I used is based on a single leaf from "miri te ahi puia" at here: www.flickr.com/photos/7411973@N03/2064280507/ I carefully placed the oiled stencil on top of the bread.
In spite of the fact that the stencil was oiled, removing it without damaging the design (not to mention the shaped loaf) turned out to be virtually impossible.
The dough appeared to have bonded right into the stencil paper.
To add insult to injury, after putting the loaf in the oven, some of the bread stayed on the peel. I used a spatula to scrape of the rest of the dough from the peel, scrunch that into an ugly little mass and opened the oven an plopped it on top. And baked the loaf.
Half way through baking, I had to wrestle the half-baked loaf off of the stone, leaving pieces of bread behind. I managed to turn the stupid thing around to finish baking.
Yes. It looks decidedly like a Cornish pasty or an apple turnover, doesn't it?
Remarkably, the loaf turned out to be quite tasty. The crumb has a lovely aroma with just the tiniest hint of sourness. And not one sign of black dots.
Biscotti Picanti . Broa . Brunkans Långa . Challah . Chinese Steamed Flower Rolls . Coccodrillo . Cornucopia . Croissants and Pains au Chocolat . Cuban Bread . Fougasse . Dan's Garlic Bread . Ensaimadas . Five-Grain Bread with Walnuts . Hamburger Buns . Herbed Soda Bread . Italian Knots . Kaiser Rolls . Mary's Dark Onion Rye . Naan . Rewena paraoa . Royal Crown Tortano . Soft Pretzels . St. Hildegard's Spelt Bread . Stollen . Streusel Potato Coffee Cake . Stromboli . Swedish Rye . Sweet Portuguese Bread . Taralli Pugliesi . Whole-Wheat Pita . Yeasted Sprouted Wheat Bread
