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I first found this bread in Peter's "Brother Juniper's Bread Book" and altered the formula to yield a 58-ounce loaf baked in a KA 6×11½-inch Hearth Rye Bread Pan. I have also made it as two free-form rounds and as two standard pan loaves. Struan, also known as Michaelmas Bread (pronounced: "mickle-mus"), was baked to celebrate The Christian Fall Equinox Festival on September 29 and traces its origin to Scotland. I have begun baking it at least once a year, but traditionally to eat on that day. It is a very delicious and healthy multi-whole grain bread and worth the time and effort to craft.

Struan Micheil in celebration of Michaelmas, September 29, 2012

A review of my Struan formula finds a sucessful revision that was originally inspired from Peter Reinhart's Brother Juniper's Bread Book and contains a majority of white flour. This simply will not do. Research has shown that this version is also deficient in historical ingredients such as wild honey, eggs and "equal parts of all the cereals grown during the year; oats, bere(6-row barley) and rye. These grains should be fanned on the floor, ground in the quern(hand mill stones), their meal in equal parts used in the struan. The struan should contain a peck of meal and should be baked on a lamb skin. The meal is moistened with sheep's milk, the sheep being deemed the most sacred animal." One can immediately see that a complete reformulation was necessary in order to bring it closer to the historical Struan "Cake". A bread made of only these three grains, all of which lack significant amounts of gluten, would indeed be more like a dense cake rather than what we have come to expect with the airy loftiness of our levened daily bread. A valiant attempt to find a source of fresh sheep's milk anywhere within the state of California was a dismal failure. Baking this three grain cake on a sheep's skin would also present an unsurmountable challenge to this baker. Therefore, some modern compromises must be made while keeping the spirit of historical authenticity. Equal weights of rolled oats and whole rye flour and whole barley flour make up a fair portion of the total flour. The grains will not be fanned upon the floor, nor ground in a quern. They will instead be freshly milled in a modern electric grain Nutrimill. The balance will include small amounts of rustic grains flour and ancient grains flour blends, raw wholemeal corn polenta and cooked brown rice. The majority gluten supplying flour will be freshly milled Montana hard red spring whole wheat flour though the sum of flours will not approach a peck(in Scotland prior to 1824, about 13 dry liters for grains and meals). The sheep's milk will be substituted with California pure sheep's milk yogurt from Bellwether Farms. The finest organic omega egg and farmstead butter will be used. Rather than sheep's skin a conventional bread pan will be used and the struan baked in a modern day electric convection oven. As was customary to honor and remember the dead, this struan will be made in the name of my late father- Vincent Samuel.

This newly reformulated Struan was built with new ingredient additions of farmstead sheep’s milk yogurt, butter, eggs and local honey. It is the culmination of several trials spanning four years, inspired by three separate formulas from three Peter Reinhart books- “Brother Juniper’s Bread Book”, “Whole Grain Breads” and “Artisan Breads Everyday”. Thank you, Peter!
Stirred, autolysed and mixed, then fermented retarded for 40 hours. Warmed, shaped, panned, and proofed. Baked, filling the kitchen and house with appealing, intoxicating, hunger-driving aromas. Removed, racked and cooled overnight. The loaf has the dominant somewhat squat shape of the pan and an irregular pock-marked un-scored top crust, visible even under the thick blanket of poppy seed. The slice reveals a crisp thin crust, nicely open, non-uniform crumb, with a medium dark color. The chew is firm but yielding, the flavors very complex grainy and dairy rich with a distinctive sourness from the sheep’s milk yogurt and the long fermentation. A successful, rewarding and delicious effort, and a worthy tribute to Michaelmas 2012.

Well chef_ub,
This is quite a quest you made there!
I had a try at that bread since I had cooked millet in the frig.
I used wildyeast instead of biga.
But I forgot the puppy seeds...
The taste is definitely good. But the "mie" easily crumble so the slice are a bit on the thick side.
I wonder if it crumbles like that because of the wild yeast or the millet.
And since I used wildyeast instead of biga I had to add A LOT of flour. Maybe too much and that's what cause the crumby texture.
Next time I will try chef's combination of grain.