A couple of weeks ago, my wife and I attended a baking class taught by Peter Reinhart as part of Johnson and Wales
Chef's Choice series, a series of Saturday morning recreational cooking classes. As part of that course, not only did we bake challah, but we brought home challahdough. Faced with a double portion of baked bread and unbaked dough, I used the unbaked dough to revisit the shaping lessons in Hamelman.
For the first braid, I improvised around the star loaf given in Hamelman. I made two changes. First, I used four and a half strands for each leg rather than six. That is, I cut three strands in half and created each leg with the half strand and two strands each from adjacent legs. Second, I used larger strands.
One suggestion I'd make for this loaf is to use small pieces of parchment for each of the formed legs. This makes it much easier to position the legs when combining the first three legs to make the intermediate legs.
For the most part, this loaf worked nicely. It was quite large—it came within an inch of the walls of my oven on either side, and I had to use two overlapping cookie sheets to bake it. Still, I think I had a better loaf this time than last. If I were doing it again, I would pay closer attention to the braid pattern at the top of the leg even if this is somewhat obscured by the rosette added in the middle of the loaf.
For the second loaf, I followed Hamelman closely. The major difference this time was that I extended the inner loops beyond the outer ring more in forming the loaf, joined them tightly, and then used a bench knife to get a good, clean edge. In retrospect, I should have used a bit more water joining them because I did get some separation at one point (upper left). Still, this is much better than last time.
These were fun loaves to revisit and much less formidable the second time around.
As we near the end of the challenge, this was another lovely loaf. It was very straightforward to make—and was very similar to many of Hamelman's other breads.
Well, even Hamelman has an un-kneaded or no-knead bread. Although with six folds, it almost seemed like I was kneading the dough. And it is worth noting that Hamelman's book came out two years before the no-knead revolution started by Jim Lahey and Mark Bittman. Still, no-knead breads have been around in one form or another for decades. There is a no-knead roll that was in the original 1931 edition of Joy of Cooking. This is not meant to diminish the work of Lahey and Bittman in refining and popularizing the technique. Indeed, there are numerous differences between Hamelman bread (notably the six folds) and Lahey's. And Lahey has a book loaded with variations.
This produced a lovely rustic, ciabatta-like loaf with a very open crumb. This is a nice loaf for a paninis. And, as promised, the pizzas had a good, chewy crust. This is a recipe worth keeping. 
This is the last of the 18 rye breads in Hamelman. And while I might be sadden that the challenge is nearing its end, finishing the rye breads came none to soon for me. This loaf was not, I regret, a spectacular success. Like too many of the rye loaves, it was a sad, heavy loaf with a coarse crust and a slightly dense crumb. Frankly, I must admit that I don't feel that I've truly mastered rye bread. My low percentage loaves have been fine, but the dense, high rye content breads simply don't appeal to me. When rye content goes above 50%, my interest in the loaf wanes. 
A couple of weeks ago, my wife and I attended a baking class taught by Peter Reinhart as part of Johnson and Wales Chef's Choice series, a series of Saturday morning recreational cooking classes. As part of that course, not only did we bake challah, but we brought home challahdough. Faced with a double portion of baked bread and unbaked dough, I used the unbaked dough to revisit the shaping lessons in Hamelman. 
For the second loaf, I followed Hamelman closely. The major difference this time was that I extended the inner loops beyond the outer ring more in forming the loaf, joined them tightly, and then used a bench knife to get a good, clean edge. In retrospect, I should have used a bit more water joining them because I did get some separation at one point (upper left). Still, this is much better than last time.
This is another seeded bread, another sourdough bread. As such, it doesn't seem all that different than some of the other breads we made in this challenge. Yet this recipe produced a spectacular loaf. This may have been due, in part, to my overcooking it a bit. At least, I cooked it until it was somewhat darker than I usually cook bread. And this loaf was clearly much better for it. In the future, I'll be looking to cook my loaves to a darker color. A great loaf, a loaf worth repeating!
Once again, I find myself jumping ahead of the challenge. Last time around, I made the fougasse with olives. As it happened, I was only ahead for a couple of days. That was the first on the list of the next set of recipes. With only a few recipes remaining, that may well happen again.
The title refers to this as having a rye sourdough. Actually, this starter is prepared from a standard sourdough culture, not a rye culture. And, as a possible alternative mentioned by Hamelman, I used rye chops rather than the cracked rye called for by the recipe. Apart for that, I prepared the loaf as described in the book. 