Bread snob at work again

I'm a bread snob. It's true, I cannot lie. The clostest people of my life all know that I will choose crusty artisan bread any day over soft bread. If it came from the grocery store it's not real and I'd rather make my own. I'm pretty pumped about our upcoming, Sunday to be exact, neighborhood Christmas gathering! After parading around the country for two months, I decided that the one thing I wanted to accomplish upon returing home was hosting a gathering. Everything revolves around food in my world. My motto, food brings the world together. So great. I'm really excited and the neighbors by golly better be here. If not, I'm going to be eating a whole lot of bread and other goodies. But after today it looks like bread will be the main course.

So my bread creations today:
(Might I add that nothing was baked today, simply dough produced and put in the fridge for fresh baking action on Sunday.)

• Whole Wheat Rustic Sourdough Bread - This recipe makes two loaves of bread. Since I am kinda trying to make as many different bread choices as possible, I divided the dough and added raisins and walnuts to one loaf. Afterall, My all time favorite WheatFields bread is Wheat Walnut Raisin. This Sourdough recipe I'm making for the second time after finding it in a new cookbook Mom recently bought. I think it's pretty great. I would love to share if you happen to have a sourdough to use.
• Soft Rye Sandwich Bread - I must say I stared at about five different rye bread recipes. Did I want the rye cracker bread, the Swedish Limpa like, the dark rye, light rye. I ended up going with this one because it seemed to be a nice combo. Complete with carroway seeds and all. I've never been a big rye bread fan, but we'll see. This did also have a rye levain added - even a small amount of levain makes it artisan in my book.
• French bread - I thought a nice basic white bread might be necessary for those people that haven't caught on to the whole grains is better philosophy. Although this is white bread it is not lame, and definitely not lacking flavor. I plan to make an epi bread, which is the baguette form of bread cut to resemble wheat. Once again I divided the dough and added rosemary to the other part just to add a bit of different flavor.

Tomorrow will bring cookies to bake, cheese balls to form, vegetables to cut up, and whatever other party favors Mom and I can whip up. Should be another great day in the Lindahl kitchen!