These golden orange loaves are an adaptation of a recipe found on straightgrade.com, a wonderful resource geared towards professional bread bakers but with much great information for anyone who loves to bake. There, Tod Bramble highlights bakers and bakeries around the US and occasionally shares one of their formulas. This Spelt-Carrot bread is originally from B & R Artisan Breads in Framingham, Massachusetts. Thanks to Jeremy for calling my attention to this unique and delicious bread!

The dough is a dream to work with, light and supple and fragrant. I almost didn’t want to bake it, I just wanted to keep my hands and my nose in the dough forever.

I suggest is letting the bread sit for about four hours after baking to let the flavors mellow. I found that when I tasted it just as it was cool (at about two hours), it had a slight bitter taste to it. After another couple of hours, however, that was gone and the bread tasted sweet and nutty and golden.

It made a lovely sandwich too.

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Try a thing you haven’t tried before three times – once to get over the fear, once to find out how to do it, and a third time to find out whether you like it or not. — Virgil Thomson

I’m going to take a few liberties with Mr. Thomson’s quote to fit my experience with this fig and fennel bread. I was never afraid of it, I knew I liked it on the first pass, and it took me until the third time to figure out how to do it. So mine would go something like this:

Try a bread you haven’t baked before three times – once to overhydrate it, once to overproof it, and a third time to find out whether you really can bake at all or if you should just hang up your apron right now and go skydiving three times.

I’m happy to report I didn’t have to resort to skydiving.

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Have I mentioned lately how much I love my sourdough starter? This baby is a trooper. Raising breads day in and day out, especially loaves with a goodly proportion of whole grains, is not easy, but it’s up to the task pretty much every time.

When our children were small we used to tell them, “You’re better than a pet.” Sometimes I want to tell my starter, “You’re better than a kid.”

OK, not really, but when my starter graces me with bread like this, and doesn’t talk back in the bargain, you know, sometimes it’s kind of a toss-up.

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