Birdseed Loaf

Day 13: By its very nature, my "Birdseed Bread" is more dense than sourdough or white bread, being comprised partly of millet flour. It has a lightly nutty flavour which I sometimes enhance with the addition of golden flaxseed meal and/or flaxseeds. Experimenting with the formula to create a Dutch-oven version, I substituted 50 grams of millet flour for bread flour in a no-knead, 70% hydration recipe which called for 500 grams total, and added 8 grams of gluten because millet flour has none. Baked in my new loaf-shaped, lidded cast-iron bread pan, it came out perfectly, cancelling any plans I had for increasing the amount of millet flour in the future. Slathered with real butter, this bread is almost a meal in itself. It also makes excellent French toast.

Although I used parchment paper here, I invested a whopping six dollars in a pair of silicone bread pan liners to help me get rather wet and oozy doughs into the pan. I'll try them out in my next experiment, but that may be a ways down the road because I now have three loaves of bread in my freezer, and I have got to make space for a Thanksgiving turkey.