Ancient alien theorists have long thought that the wee beasties found in SD are really tiny aliens brought here long ago by more complex and intelligent space traveling ancient aliens. Lucy is a firm believer in these theories and has one of her own.
She is positive that the gel that forms when chia and flax seeds are soaked, turns them into an ancient alien gel mass that may not be very good humans to consume. So she always specifies that chia and flax seeds be toasted in a dry pan until smoking, then ground and then baked at 450 F.
She thinks that this ensures that these potential evil aliens are really dead and can’t take over humans from the inside. I am a bit skeptical about the whole thing though. I’m not sure that frying grinding and baking really harms these aliens at all and really wouldn’t mind being taken over by aliens.
The idea of taking over the world when the world is so screwed up as it is a compelling to say the least and idea of punish those who screwed it up in the first place is even more appealing. But hey, it is bake day and we can’t be diverted from it no matter how nice the theory sounds.
This bread is a 25% sprouted 10 grain and 36% whole grain bread. The remaining 64% is bread flour. Overall. hydration is 76%. The add ins were 2% pink Himalayan sea salt, 2% red malt and 20% total chia and flax seeds in equal amounts. The toted and f=ground seeds were hydrated separately in twice their weight in water and this water was not included in the recipe hydration.
The levain was a 3 stage, 100% hydration, 12 hour total, whole grain rye one using 10g of the last of the NMNF starter which had 10% pre-fermented whole grain rye flour. Once the levain was built it was retarded overnight. The next day we did 4th stage using the 5% bran sifted out from the sprouted 10 grains.
We stirred the 3stage rye levian down, added the sprouted bran and equal amounts of water and let the levain sit on the counter for 1 hour until it had risen 70%. During this hour we autolysed the remaining high extraction sprouted and bread flour with the dough water and salt sprinkled on top.
Once the levain hit the mix was did 30 slap and folds to mix it all together followed by 2 more sets of 8 slaps and 3 sets of 4 slaps – all on 20 minute intervals. We put the seeds on to gel for the autolyze and the first 3 sets of slap and folds. By the time they hit the mix on slap and fold 4 they had really set up to max gel stage and we hope the aliens were all dead by then.
Once the slapping was done we pre-shaped and shaped the dough into an oval and dropped it into a rice floured basket for a 20 hour cold retard in the fridge. Once we saw it the next morning it was past 100% proofed but rather than reshaping it and letting it proof again, we decided to bake it straight out of the fridge cold, slashed and baked on the bottom stone with Mega Steam using lava rocks.
We preheated to 500 F and slid the bread in on parchment for 2 minutes of steam at 500 F before turning the oven down to 460F for 16 more minutes of steam. When the steam come out we saw the dough had puffed itself up a bit, rounding itself, but didn’t rally bloom which was expected. We turned the oven down to 425 F convection and continued baking for another 23 minutes until the center was 208 F.
I smelled seedy for sure and we look forward to it cooling just in time for lunch sandwiches and a crumb shot. It sure tastes seedy enough! Yum. Made a fine Genoa salami sandwich for lunch too. Very soft and moist crumb and open enough for a bread with some much add ins getting in the way. Very tasty indeed - we like it a lot!
