Danni3ll3's blog

I wasn’t happy with the rise I got the last time I did this. Thinking back on it, I think the loaves were already over proofed when I put them into the fridge. I remember poking them and the imprint sort of staying there. It was late at night and I wasn’t thinking things through. I probably should have baked them right then and there but being late, and they really hadn’t risen a lot, I thought they could wait. This time round, I changing up a few things:

1. Give the levain a good feeding each time and retard it for 24 hours.
2. Reduce the hydration by 50 g and skip the diastatic malt. 
3. Do 100 initial slaps and folds to get the gluten going.
4. Don’t proof the loaves on the counter after shaping. Put straight into the fridge.
5. And I am going to go back to my rustic tearing of the dough by proofing seam side down. 

Recipe 

Makes 3 loaves 

Soaker

50 g sunflower seeds

25 g sesame seeds

25 g chia seeds

50 g old fashioned oats (large flake)

150 g hot water 

Dough

50 g buckwheat flour (mill 50 g of buckwheat groats)

100 g high extraction rye flour (mill 125 g of rye berries)

200 g high extraction red fife flour (mill 250 g of red fife berries)

650 g unbleached flour 

50 g freshly ground flax

12 g vital wheat gluten 

725 g filtered water at 85F 

35 g yogurt 

22 g salt

200 g bran 3 stage levain and retarded 24 hours

Three days before:

1. Before bedtime, take 5 g of your refrigerated starter and feed it equal quantities of filtered water and unbleached flour. Let it activate for the rest of the night.

Two days before:

1. In the morning, feed your levain 16 g each of filtered water and unbleached flour.
2. During the day or at night, mill the grains (red fife, rye, buckwheat) and sift out the bran for the red fife and the rye. I ended up with 55 g of bran which is a lot more than my previous shot at this recipe. I think I may not have sifted the bran as thoroughly. 
3. Grind the flax seeds in a bullet.
4. Weigh the high extraction (sifted) flours needed and place in a tub. To the tub, add the vital wheat gluten and the ground flax. Stir well to distribute the VWG, cover, and reserve.
5. Weigh the bran and the extra high extraction flour for the levain. You will need 89 g of the bran and extra sifted flour. If you are short, make up the rest with unbleached flour. I had to add 9 g of unbleached flour to make up the total. I always make a bit more levain than needed because some always gets left stuck to the walls of the container.
6. Before going to bed, add 89 g of water and the 89 g of bran/extra flour mix to the starter, and let sit overnight.

 One day before:

1. In the morning, place your levain in the refrigerator and leave it for 24 hours.

Dough making day:

1. In the morning, stir the levain and place in a warm spot. Let it rise 25%.
2. At the same time, add 725 g of warm water to the flour tub, mix until all the flours are hydrated, and autolyse for 3 hours or until the levain is ready. 
3. Toast the seeds and oats for the soaker in a dry frying pan and soak them in the hot water. 
4. Once the levain is ready, add the salt, the yogurt and the levain, and mix well to integrate. Do 100 slaps and folds and let rest 30 minutes in the oven with the lights on and the door cracked open (~82F). 
5. Do one set of 8 stretches and folds. Place back in the warm spot for another 30 minutes.
6. Do another set of folds in the tub and then take the dough out of the tub onto a barely damp counter. Spread the dough out in a large rectangle and sprinkle with part of the toasted seed mixture. Fold the dough into envelope folds and sprinkle more seeds on the bare spots. Do gentle sleeping ferret (coil) folds until the seeds are well integrated. Place the dough back into the tub, cover and place back into the warm spot. Wait 30 minutes. 
7. Do another 2 sets of folds 30 minutes apart. At this point the dough should be holding its shape for a while after folding. Let rest. Bulk fermentation is done when you can see some small and large bubbles on the surface. The dough had risen 50% at this point and took a total of about 4 and a half hours. 
8. Remove the dough from the tub into a bare counter. Sprinkle flour over the dough and divide into 3 equal portions of about 775 g. Sprinkle a bit more flour over the portions and round the boules using a bench knife. Let rest 15-20 minutes. 
9. Shape tightly into boules and place seam up into rice floured bannetons. Cover and place in a cold fridge (38F) to proof overnight.

Baking Day

1. The next morning, heat the oven to 475F with the dutch ovens inside for at least 45 minutes. Place rounds of parchment paper in the bottom of the pots, score the boules with scissors , and gently place the dough seam side down inside. 
2. Cover the pots and bake the loaves at 450 F for 25 minutes, remove the lids, drop the temperature to 425F, and bake for another 22 minutes.

Well the oven spring is only marginally better. I wonder what it is with my recipe that prevents it from getting decent oven spring. Is there too much rye and buckwheat? It looked like decent gluten development... Did I overproof it again by being in the fridge for just over 12 hours? I am going to check the temperature of the fridge. Nope, temp is 38.1 F. I was very careful during shaping not to deflate the dough. I went back to pulling the corners out, folding to the middle and then rolling the dough up. I am at a bit of a loss. 

Going to try one more thing... I am going to heat the oven to 500F and see what happens with the second batch of 6. 

Am I crazy to serve baguettes to French cousins? Probably, but oh well! Family dinner coming up tonight and I was asked to bring bread for the cheese course. I am bringing a loaf of my flat 4 grain bread ? but since that wasn’t my best effort and my mom prefers baguettes, here they are. 

I used this recipe as it has been good to me in the past. Scoring could be a lot better but I am quite happy with the shape. 

I don’t usually bake mid week, but I had requests from family and friends who needed bread ASAP! I was also asked to repeat the 5 grain levain loaves but since I like to try different combinations, I thought I would take inspiration from Frank’s Let’s Blame CNN bread and Hamelman’s 5 grain levain. 

I was going to retard the levain it since time was of the essence, I ended up going for a young levain. It seemed to be quite active and rose nicely in spite of short timelines. 

I also tried something I have never done before and that was to proof the boules seam side up. In the past, even if I scored the boules, which I rarely do, I still placed the boules seams side down in the bannetons. I thought that maybe I am missing out on a  secret on something seemingly so simple so why not! Maybe I’ll get nice ears. ?

Recipe 

Makes 3 loaves 

Soaker

50 g sunflower seeds

25 g sesame seeds

25 g chia seeds

50 g old fashioned oats (large flake)

Soak in 150 g hot water 

Dough

50 g high extraction buckwheat flour (mill 75 g of buckwheat groats)

100 g high extraction rye flour (mill 125 g of rye berries)

200 g high exraction red fife flour (mill 250 g of red fife berries)

650 g unbleached flour 

50 g freshly ground flax

12 g vital wheat gluten 

11 g diastatic malt (mill 11 g of row 2 barley malt berries)

775 g filtered water at 89F (divided)

30 g yogurt 

20 g salt

200 g bran 3 stage Levain

The day before:

1. In mid afternoon, take a teaspoon full of your refrigerated starter and feed it equal quantities of filtered water and unbleached flour. Let it activate for the rest of the day.
2. Mill the grains (red fife, rye, buckwheat) and sift out the bran. The buckwheat had practically no bran to speak of. I ended up with 30 g of bran.
3. Mill and sift the malt barley berries to get diastatic malt powder. 
4. Grind the flax seeds in a bullet (Komo recommends against milling oily seeds like flax in their mills).
5. Weigh the high extraction (sifted) flours needed and place in a tub. To the tub, add the diastatic malt, the vital wheat gluten and the ground flax. Stir well to distribute the malt and the VWG, cover, and reserve.
6. Save the bran and the extra high extraction flour for the levain. I was a bit short so I needed another 5 or so grams of unbleached flour to make up the difference. I needed a total of 100 g of bran and leftover flour for the next two stages of the levain.
7. Before going to bed, add 30 g of water to the revived starter, stir and add the bran. Let sit overnight.

Dough making day:

1. In the morning, do the last build of the levain by adding 70 g of the extra high extraction flour/unbleached flour and 70 g water. Place in a warm spot. The levain doubled in 4 hours. 
2. Two hours after doing the final feeding of the Levain, add 725 g of warm water to the flour tub and autolyse for 2 hours or until the levain has doubled. 
3. Toast the seeds and oats for the soaker in a dry frying pan and soak them in the hot water. 
4. Once the levain is ready, add the salt, the yogurt and the levain as well has 50 g water, and mix well to integrate. Do 50 in tub folds and let rest 30 minutes in the oven with the lights on and the door cracked open (~82F). 
5. Do one set of 8 stretches and folds. Place back in the warm spot for another 30 minutes.
6. Do another set of folds in the tub and then take the dough out of the tub onto a barely damp counter. Spread the dough out in a large rectangle and sprinkle with part of the toasted seed mixture. Fold the dough into envelope folds and sprinkle more seeds on the bare spots. Do gentle coil folds until the seeds are well integrated. Place the dough back into the tub, cover and place back into the warm spot. 
7. Do one last fold 30 minutes later. At this point the dough should be holding its shape for a while after folding. Let rest. Bulk fermentation is done when you can see small and large bubbles on the surface. This dough took about 4 hours. 
8. My dough then went into the fridge for 4 hours due to another commitment. It had risen significantly when I got back to it. 
9. Remove the dough from the tub into a bare counter. Sprinkle flour over the dough and divide into 3 equal portions of about 790 g. Sprinkle a bit more flour over the portions and round the boules using a bench knife. Let rest 20 minutes. 
10. Shape tightly into boules and place seam up into rice floured bannetons. Cover and let rest at room temperature (73F) for about an hour and a half. Then place in a cold fridge (38F) to proof overnight.

Baking Day

1. The next morning, heat the oven to 475F with the dutch ovens inside for at least 45 minutes. Place rounds of parchment paper in the bottom of the pots, score the boules and gently place the dough seam side down inside. 
2. Cover the pots and bake the loaves at 450 F for 25 minutes, remove the lids, drop the temperature to 425F, and bake for another 22 minutes.

Well, I am not sure what is going on but this is the second bake this week that is a bust. I just opened a new bag of flour for both of those and I wonder if that is the problem. I think though that the raisin fennel bread was from the same bag and it was fine. Not a happy camper these days!

I am redoing this bread on Sunday so any thoughts on improving this are welcome. I will retard the bran levain and maybe do 150 slaps and folds at the start to get the gluten going. Although it did seem quite well developed to me. ?

This particular loaf is inspired from Maurizio at The Perfect Loaf. I was looking for a different flavour combination and this intrigued me. I am not particularly fond of fennel but the rave reviews convinced me.

The first hiccup was to find some diastatic malt because Maurizio uses malted flour but no such animal is available in Canada. I thought I had made diastatic malt last weekend but since I let the shoots get green, I was informed by “the powers that be” that my diastatic malt was no such thing. Well that explains why I didn’t notice a darker crust or crumb. So I was on the hunt to find some locally. Long story short, I found some CMC Canadian 2-row malt berries in a small brew shop. Yes! And “the powers that be” on TFL tell me that this will work! Double yes!

The second hiccup was milling my whole grains. Maurizio used whole wheat flour but I wanted to change things up so I subbed out some Kamut and Spelt just because. ?Well, I didn’t quite mill enough to provide enough bran for the levain so I ended up using some bran left over from last week’s bake. I was short 2 g of Kamut so I simply added 2 grams of red fife. I adjusted the quantities below so that it should be okay. If there isn’t enough bran for the levain, just make up the difference with unbleached flour.

Recipe:

Makes 3 loaves

Ingredients

Levain:

25 g starter

50 g bran/flour mixture left over from milling and sifting

50 g unbleached flour

90 g water at 85F (divided into 50 and 40 g portions)

Main dough:

125 g high extraction Red Fife flour (mill and sift 140 g of whole berries)

50 g high extraction Kamut flour (mill and sift 65 g of whole berries)

50 g high extraction Spelt flour (mill and sift 65 g of whole berries)

800 g unbleached all purpose flour

11 g diastatic malt powder (mill finely 11 g of CMC Canadian 2-Row Malt barley berries)

50 g freshly ground flax

12 g vital wheat gluten

800 g of water at 86F

20 g pink himalayan salt

30 g yogurt

150 g levain

200 g golden raisins (soaked in hot water for 30 minutes and drained)

7 g freshly ground fennel seed

2 days before:

1. In the morning, take a bit of your refrigerated starter and feed it equal quantities of filtered water and unbleached flour. Do the same again about 12 hours later. I prefer using bottled or filtered water as the chlorine can affect the wee beasties in a negative way.
2. Mill the grains (red fife, kamut, spelt) and sift out the bran. 
3. Mill the malt barley berries to get diastatic malt powder. 
4. Grind the flax seeds in a bullet (Komo recommends against milling oily seeds like flax in their mills).
5. Weigh the high extraction (sifted) flours needed and place in a tub. To the tub, add the diastatic malt, the vital wheat gluten and the ground flax. Stir well to distribute the malt and the VWG, cover, and reserve.
6. Save the bran and the extra flour for the levain.
7. Grind the fennel seed in a bullet to get a fairly fine powder. Reserve.

1 day before:

1. In the morning, do the first build of the levain by adding 50 g of warm water and 50 g of bran/left over milled flour to the revived starter. 
2. 4 hours later, add the 50 grams of unbleached flour and 40 g of warm water. Let rest for 6 - 8 hours and then refrigerate overnight to let the acid work its magic on the bran. I let mine rise for 6 hours since it peaked at that point then into the fridge for 15 hours. Hopefully, this was long enough for the acid to soften the bran and prevent it from cutting too many gluten strands.

Dough making day:

1. Take the levain out of the fridge and let it warm up.
2. Add the warm water to the flour tub and autolyse for at least 3 hours. The dough felt very firm right from the beginning. I am not sure if this was because of the hydration or the additives but this was definitely not a loose dough. 
3. Add the salt, the yogurt and the levain and mix well to integrate. Do 50 in tub folds/coils and let rest 30 minutes in the oven with the lights on and the door cracked open (~82F). The gluten seemed really well developed and the dough pulled cleanly off the walls of the container about half way though the folds. 
4. The plan was to remove the dough from the tub and do 100 slaps and folds on the counter. I decided that this dough didn’t need this so I did regular stretch and folds for a total of 8 folds using both hands to really give it a good stretch. Place back in the warm spot. 
5. At this point, boil water and pour the hot water on the raisins and let soak. 30 minutes later, drain the raisins. I saved the soaking water with plans to either flavour my kefir with it or use it in another bread recipe. 
6. Take the dough out of the tub onto a barely damp counter and do a set of envelope folds in both directions. Let rest 10 minutes. Spread the dough out in a large rectangle and sprinkle with part of the raisins and ground fennel. Fold the dough into envelope folds and sprinkle more raisins and fennel on the bare spots. Do gentle slaps and folds until the raisins stop popping out of the dough. Place the dough back into the tub and into the warm spot. Be sure to keep the dough covered whenever it is in the tub. 
7. Continue doing stretches and folds every 30 minutes until the dough holds itself nicely into a round shape. It took another 3 sets after the addition of the raisins with this dough. Then let rest until you can see small and large bubbles on the surface. Total bulk fermentation for this particular dough was 4.5 hours. 
8. At this point, I thought I wouldn’t have time to divide and shape the dough before my walk so I put it in the fridge. The walking buddies decided that 37C was too hot to walk but my dough was already in the fridge. So some time was spent baking blueberry muffins, French blueberry yogurt cake and a blueberry crumble pie. Oh, did I mention I got my hands on some wild blueberries? The dough stayed in the fridge for about 2 and a half hours. 
9. Remove the dough from the tub into a bare counter. Sprinkle flour over the dough and divide into 3 equal portions of about 790 g. Sprinkle a bit more flour over the portions and round the boules using a bench knife. Let rest. Eat one or two blueberry muffins. ?
10. After an hour rest, shape tightly into boules (I used this method:https://youtu.be/ww78_SfGyQE ) and place seam side down into rice floured bannetons. Cover and let rest at room temperature (73F) for two hours. Then place in a cold fridge (38F) to proof overnight.

Baking Day

1. The next morning, heat the oven to 475F with the dutch ovens inside for at least 45 minutes. Place rounds of parchment paper in the bottom of the pots, and gently place the dough seam side up inside. 
2. Cover the pots and bake the loaves at 450 F for 25 minutes, remove the lids, drop the temperature to 425F, and bake for another 22 minutes.

Looks like I got fantastic bloom on these loaves. They really burst open! I hope the crumb is as nice as the outside! Oh and they smell wonderful!

I loved all the posts on the community bake and decided to join in on the fun with a few adaptations of course! ?Here is my version:

Diastatic Malt

4 Days before:

1. Soak 1 cup of Selkirk wheat berries in filtered water for 6 hours. Drain and leave on the counter rinsing every 6-8 hours. 
2. Twenty-four hours later, hubby announces that he accidentally smashed the jar with the sprouting berries. ? After I freaked out on him ? because I won’t have enough time now to make this diastatic malt (it is Wednesday and I need it for Saturday), he runs and gets me another cup of wheat berries. I decide to give it another shot and hope that by using a very warm spot, it will speed things along. I place the soaking berries in the oven with the light on and the door cracked open (this creates a temperature of around 82F). 
3. After 6 hours, I drain them and put them back into the warm spot and continue rinsing every few hours. A minor miracle happens ??and 48 hours later, I have sprouted berries with green shoots by Friday morning. I then dried them in the oven using the lights again with the door occasionally cracked open to let the water vapor out. The oven is about 100F with the door closed and about 82F with the door held open with a wooden spoon. It took 24 hours for the berries to be rock hard.
4. I milled them using my Komo mill on the finest setting. This took a bit as the rootlets and the shoots did not flow smoothly into the milling chamber. I had to help things along a bit by pushing the berries into the hole at the bottom of the hopper. I certainly hope that all of this hassle making this malt will be worth it!

Recipe:

Makes 3 boules

Starter:

60 g starter

30 g unbleached all purpose flour

70 g soaked bran (explanation in directions)

30 g water at 90F

Main dough:

559 g high extraction Selkirk wheat flour (explanation below)

292 g Rogers Bread Flour

266 g Rogers Unbleached No Additives All Purpose flour

50 g freshly ground flax

12 g Diastatic malt

936 g water at ~90F divided (explanation below)

25 g Himalayan pink salt

30 g full fat local yogurt

158 g levain (explanation below)

2 Days before:

1. Revive your starter by feeding it about 1:1:1 every 6-8 hours. I initially used plain all purpose flour but once I had milled the flour for the bread, I used the left over high extraction flour and some bran.

1 Day before:

1. Mill 625 g of Selkirk wheat berries and sift to obtain 559 g of high extraction wholewheat flour and ~60 g of bran. I also had a bit of the high extraction flour left over so I used that and some of the bran to feed my seed starter in order to continue getting it up to speed.
2. Place the high extraction whole wheat flour, bread flour, a/p flour, the flax and malt in a container and reserve.
3. Take 30 g of bran and soak it in 40 g of water and a bit of the starter. This is to break down the bran and soften it as much as possible before using it in the levain and the dough.

Dough Day:

1. Make the levain: Mix 60 g of the activated starter with the soaked bran, the unbleached flour and 30 g of water at 90F. I then placed it in my trusty warm spot. This will make a bit more than needed and it is probably thicker than in the original recipe due to the bran. This was mixed at 11:30 am which is about an hour longer than Maurizio specifies in his recipe. The reason is because I only used half of the water at his specified temperature so I figured it might take a tad longer to mature. 
2. Well, the levain was zooming along so after 2 hours and 15 minutes, I took it out of the warm spot and put it on the counter to slow it down! 
3. I also decided to start the mixing and autolyse a bit early since I am making 4 batches of this dough and I need time to mix it all. At 2 pm, I mixed 836 g of 91F water with the reserved flour mix until all the flour was hydrated and at 2:15 pm, I placed the dough in the warm spot in the oven. The remaining water will be added with the levain and the salt. 
4. Two hours later, I added 30 g yogurt, 50 g water and 158 g levain. I mixed it in well and did probably 30-40 in bucket folds to get it all mixed in. I let the dough rest while I mixed the other batches. Then I did 100 slap and folds on the counter, spread the dough out, sprinkled the salt and another 25 g water (I decided that  the whole remaining 50 g would be too much), did another 50 slaps and folds and placed the dough back into its bucket. The dough went back into its warm spot. This took me 45 minutes for 4 batches of dough and gave me a really good upper arm workout!
5. During bulk fermentation, I did 5 sets of folds half an hour apart as per Maurizio’s instructions. The dough felt very loose at the beginning. Then it started tightening up nicely. I used Maurizio’s two handed stretch with a ferret coil at the end of the four folds. After the 5 folds, I left the dough to rise in its warm spot for another hour and half. Bulk fermentation was a total of 3 and half hours.
6. I divided the dough into portions of about 760 g each. Some flour was sprinkled over the portions and I rounded the boules using my scraper. I must say that this is getting a lot easier. The dough didn’t stick to the scraper, or to me for a change. After a 20 minute rest, I followed Maurizio’s instructions for shaping: “Flip one resting round over so the floured side is down on the work surface. Fold the top of the dough up and over to the middle and repeat for the bottom (you’ll now have a long slender rectangle in front of you). Pickup the rectangle and rotate it 90º so it’s now lengthwise facing you. Grab the dough at the very top and fold over a little ways, press to seal with the main mass of the dough. Now grab this rolled over top and gently continue to roll it down towards the bottom, tucking in the dough as you go (imagine rolling down a beach towel). At the end of this you’ll have a tube that has essentially been rolled downward.”  I was very surprised at how little flour was used this time. It was about half of what I usually use for shaping. This dough was really nice to work with!
7. The boules went seam side down into bannetons sprinkled with some of the leftover bran. Plastic bowl covers used to cover the bannetons. Finally, the bannetons were placed into a cold fridge (38F) for 10-11 hours.
8. The next morning, heat the oven to 475F with the dutch ovens inside for at least 45 minutes. Place rounds of parchment paper in the bottom of the pots, score the loaves, and gently place the dough seam side up inside. I turn out the dough onto a cornmeal sprinkled counter first, score, then place it into the pots. 
9. Cover the pots and bake the loaves at 450 F for 25 minutes, remove the lids, drop the temperature to 425F, and bake for another 22 minutes.

The scores really didn’t open up much but the boules are nicely full and round. They feel nice and light so I am hopeful for a decent crumb. Right now the first two batches are cooling and the last two batches are about to go in. 

On a recent trip to the US, I discovered Trader Joe’s. Wow! Lots of cool new things to check out. One of them was unsulfured dried apple rings. Of course , I had to grab a couple of packages. 

And looking around for ideas, I found a recipe using dried apples, cranberries and hard cider (http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/17974/51410-cranberry-apple-cider-bread-walnuts). I took my last European Peasant Bread recipe adaptation and added/subbed the above ingredients to it. So here goes:

Recipe:

 Makes 3 loaves

Ingredients:

150 g spelt berries

150 g rye berries

150 g Kamut berries

820 g unbleached flour

50 g freshly ground flax

350 g filtered water

500 g hard cider

23 g Himalayan pink salt

30 g local yogurt

100 g cranberries 

75 g dried apples rings

280 g 100% hydration levain (procedure indicated below)

Two nights before:

1. Mill the kamut, spelt and rye berries separately and sift out the bran to feed the levain. Weigh the bran and set aside. Mine ended up weighing 50 g. Weigh out 90 g of the sifted rye and save for the levain. Put the remainder of the rye and the sifted kamut and spelt in a bowl. Add the unbleached flour and the freshly ground flax. Reserve.

The morning before:

1. After refreshing my starter 2 or 3 times, I took 15 g of starter and added all of the bran with 50 g of water ?. I let it sit at room temp for about 12 hours.

The night before:

1. Feed the levain the reserved rye flour and 90 g of water. Let rise overnight. It should have more than doubled by the morning. 
2. Chop the dried apple rings ? . Place the cranberries and chopped apple bits in a bowl and set aside.

Dough procedure:

1. If the Levain has doubled but you aren’t ready for it, stir it down and let rise again. 
2. Add the water and the hard cider to the flour/flax blend. Mix to a shaggy dough and let sit for about 3 hours. 
3. Add the pink salt, the yogurt and the levain and mix well. I did 100 in bucket folds to make sure everything was well integrated and gluten development was well on its way. The dough tightens up and eventually you can’t really do a stretch but you can fold the dough over itself going around the bucket. The dough smooths out nicely and you can see all of the bran from the levain evenly dispersed throughout the dough. Let the dough ferment at room temp (73F).
4. Do sets of stretches and folds about 30 minutes apart for the entire span of bulk fermentation. 
5. Add the fruit ? at the second set of folds. To do this, I placed the dough on the counter and sprinkled about a third of the fruit on top. Then I did letter-folds and sprinkled more fruit on the bare folds as I went along. Finally I did a bunch of slaps and folds to distribute the fruit, and the dough went back into the bucket. Be sure to keep the dough covered so it doesn’t dry out. 
6. When the dough had risen about 25% (4 hours at 73F - dough was really slow for some reason), I placed the dough into the fridge. The dough rested in the fridge for four hours. It didn’t rise much more in the fridge (I think slow was the motto of the day!)
7. Dump the dough out onto a bare counter. Lightly flour the top of the dough and divide into 3 equal portions of ~850 g. Pre-round the dough with a scraper. 
8. The dough felt quite firm so I decided to let it rest for at least an hour, hoping to give it some time to gain some airiness. I ended up leaving it for 2 hours when it finally felt just about right. 
9. Shape the dough into boules. Flour the top of the boule, flip it over, pull out the top corners and stick them to the center of the dough. Do the same for the two bottom corners. Then take the points that were formed and overlap them in the middle, rolling from top to bottom. Flip the boule over and use the dough scraper to do tension pulls until you have a nice tight shape. Place seam side down in rice floured bannetons, cover and let rise on the counter at room temp (73F) for an hour. 
10. Finally put the dough to bed, in the fridge, for the night. By the time I was done, it was 2:30 am. ? I mixed the dough for the autolyse at 10:30 am, and since this dough was moving so slowly, this made for a long day. Good thing I am a night owl to begin with! ? 
11. The next morning, heat the oven to 475F with the dutch ovens inside for at least 45 minutes. Place rounds of parchment paper in the bottom of the pots and gently place the dough seam side up inside. I turn out the dough onto a cornmeal sprinkled counter first, then place it into the pots. The dough was very firm so my expectations of a nice oven spring were dashed. It seems that the softer the dough coming out of the fridge, the better the oven spring. 
12. Cover the pots and bake the loaves at 450 F for 25 minutes, remove the lids (good, not fantastic oven spring), drop the temperature to 425F, and bake for another 22 minutes. I decided to score the second batch of six loaves in the hopes of getting a better ear and rise since the first batch split all over the place on the top. I usually get 2 or 3 cracks which I like but these were a bit much. Well, that didn’t work. They still split all over the place, however, this batch did have somewhat better oven spring. I guess this bread really had a mind of its own! ?

As to the overall slowness of the dough, the day wasn’t particularly warm outside (68F) and it was quite overcast with the occasional rain showers. Someone mentioned that they noticed atmospheric pressure affected the fermentation of their bread and I wonder if this was at play in this case. Last week the dough moved along quite briskly. Mind you it was a completely different recipe but still...

I have been away from bread making for a month due to other obligations and this was the recipe that called out to my baker’s soul. ? 

The last time I did this recipe, I used cracked rye and oat groats so I changed it to bulgur and old fashioned oats. I also changed the Wholewheat flour from Red Fife to Selkirk wheat. The bran was sifted out and used in feeding my starter to get it up to speed before making the final levain. 

The procedure was also changed a bit as my curiosity was piqued when reading about putting the dough in the fridge at the end of the bulk fermentation. A few of you seem to be getting some amazing results. I do remember getting some really open crumbs when I have occasionally retarded the bulk in the middle of things due to an interruption of some sort, but I have never done this intentionally. And never for several hours! 

Makes 3 loaves

Liquid Levain build 

272 g Bread flour 

343 g Water 

55 g Starter (bran was used to refresh it at a 100 % hydration)  

Soaker

100 g bulgur

100 g Flaxseeds 

85 g Sunflower seeds 

85 g old fashioned oats (large flake)

484 g Water, boiling 

6 g Salt 

Dough

533 g Unbleached flour 

15 g Vital Wheat Gluten

274 g Sifted freshly milled Selkirk wheat flour  

303 g Water 

30 g yogurt (Greek because that is what I had on hand)

21 g Pink Himalayan Salt 

All of the Soaker 

650 g Levain 

A couple of days or the morning before

1. Main dough and levain prep: Mill 320 g of Selkirk berries and sift. Use 274 g of the sifted flour for the main dough and reserve the bran and the remaining few grams of sifted flour to revive or feed the starter prior to making the final levain. 

1. Soaker prep: Measure out the bulgur, and oats. Reserve. Grind the flax seeds coarsely in a Bullet or spice grinder. Add to the bulgur and the oats. Toasts the sunflower seeds and add to the bulgur, oats and flax. Add the 6 g of salt. Cover and reserve.

1. Main dough prep: To the 274 g of sifted flour, add the unbleached flour, and the vital wheat gluten. Mix well to distribute the VWG.  Cover and reserve.

The night before making the dough

1. Levain: Twelve to sixteen hours before the the final mixing of the dough, put all of the ingredients together for the levain and keep covered at room temperature (73 F).
2. Soaker: Add the boiling water to the soaker ingredients and cover. Leave to cool overnight at room temperature.

Final mix and bake

1. Put the water and the yogurt for the dough in a bowl and add the soaker. Mix well to loosen the mass. Measure 650 g of the levain, add to water and soaker, and mix again. Add this mixture to the reserved flour mix and make sure to mix well to a shaggy dough. Autolyse for 60 to 75 minutes.
2. My dough felt dry so I added another 50-60g of water with the salt. Mix well to integrate all ingredients and do several series of folds to begin developing the gluten. I initially did 50 folds, let rest 10 minutes, do another 10 or so folds, rest 10 more minutes ad do another 5 or 6 folds. 
3. Bulk ferment the dough at room temperature and do folds every half hour until the dough has risen about 30%. This took 2 hours at 73F. 
4. Place in the fridge for 4-5 hours. I left mine for 4.5 hours in a 37F fridge. The dough rose to just about double. 
5. Pour the dough out onto a bare counter and divide into 3 loaves. Lightly flour the top of the portions and gently round into boules using a dough scraper. This was much easier than usual because of the cold dough. 
6. Let rest 45 minutes. Do a final shape by cinching and rounding the dough with a scraper to make a fairly tight boule, but without deflating the dough. Place seam side down in rice/ap floured bannetons and cover. Let rise on the counter for an hour and then put to bed in the fridge for the night.
7. The next morning, pre-heat the oven and the Dutch ovens to 475F. Place parchment rounds in the bottom of the pots and place the dough in seam side up. Score if you wish. I chose not to. Cover and bake for 25 minutes at 450F. Remove lids and bake for another 25 minutes at 425F or until the inside temperature is 205 F or or more.

The loaves had pretty good but not fantastic oven spring. That being said, I got great ears even though I didn’t score the dough.  Crumb shots to come later when they cool. That’s the first batch to come out of the oven. I have a second batch of six and a batard to go in as soon as the oven is back up to temp. 

One of my brothers asked me to make buns to go with the burgers and crab we are having tomorrow for Father’s Day. I surfed a number of recipes but kept coming back to this one. 

https://stellaculinary.com/recipes/baking-pastry/baking/bread/hamburger-brioche-buns-large

So here they are...

I doubled the recipe and scaled them to 115 -116 g each. And instead of baking them in a foil collar as suggested in the recipe, I used 6 inch foil pie pans. I did half with sesame seeds and half plain. 

We will see how the family likes them tomorrow. 

I haven’t baked for the last couple of weekends because I was in Antigua for my niece’s wedding. It was my first time in the Caribbean and it was fabulous. Great resort, great food and fantastic weather. It sure beats what we have been having here.

I am continuing  baking breads inspired by CedarMountains recipes from a couple of years ago. This one is very similar but not exactly like his. 

Recipe 

Makes 3 loaves

Main dough:

100 g Kamut berries

100 g Spelt berries

100 g Red Fife berries

110 g Rye berries

700 g unbleached flour

50 g flax seeds

15 g white sesame seeds

750 g water

22 g pink Himalayan salt

220 g 100% hydration bran/rye flour levain (procedure is in recipe)

Porridge:

45 g kamut flakes

45 g spelt flakes

180 g water

30 g full fat plain yogurt

A few days before:

1. Revive your starter by feeding it regularly. Ensure that you have 45 g to inoculate the levain.

The night before:

1. Mill all the grains separately and sift out the bran. I ended up with 58 g of bran from all of the grains. You need a total of 95 g of bran/high extraction rye flour for the levain. My mix ended up being 58 g of bran and 37 g of the rye flour. Adjust as necessary to get the required 95 g. Place the remainder of the rye flour with the other flours (including the unbleached flour) in a bowl or bucket. 
2. Grind the flax seeds (I do this in a bullet) and add to the mix of flours.
3. Toast the sesame seeds in a dry frying ban until lightly golden, let cool and grind to a powder. I used the bullet for this as well. Add to the mix of flours and ground flax.
4. Make the porridge using all the ingredients listed and cook until the flakes are tender. Cover and let cool overnight.
5. Before going to bed, take 45 g of your starter and add all of the reserved bran/high extraction flour mix and 95 of filtered water. This makes a bit more than 220 g of levain. The extra is to account for what you can’t scrape out of the container. Mix well and let rise overnight. Mine only rose 1.5 times but that is to be expected when there is that much bran in the levain. There were lots of bubbles though throughout.

Main dough:

1. Pour 750 g of water into the porridge and loosen the mix. 
2. Add this to the flour mixture and mix well. Autolyse the mix for a couple of hours with the salt on top. The dough smelled like peanut butter! It is amazing that grinding sesame seeds can make such an impact on the aroma even though it is a very small amount. 
3. Add the levain and mix well. Do 50 in bucket folds to ensure that gluten development is well on its way. Cover and place the dough in a warm spot to rise.
4. Do sets of stretches and folds about 30-45 minutes apart for the first 3 sets then go to hourly folds for the remainder span of bulk fermentation. The dough felt great right from the first set of stretches and folds. Bulk fermentation took 4 hours and the dough rose about 40%. 
5. Wet the sides of the dough with your hand to loosen from the bucket, and dump out onto a bare counter. Lightly flour the top of the dough again and divide into 3 equal portions of about 790 g.  Pre-round the portions with a wet scraper. I let my hands wet to prevent the dough from sticking while weighing it and moving it around. This actually worked well. 
6. Let rest for 30-40 minutes and then shape into a fairly tight boule.  The dough didn’t want to form a tight skin so I didn’t get the boules as tight as I wanted. The few I got fairly tight were beginning to tear so I did what I could. Place seam side down in rice/AP floured bannetons, cover, and put to bed in a very cold fridge for the night. 

Baking day:

1. The next morning, heat the oven to 475 F with the dutch ovens inside for at least 45 minutes. Place rounds of parchment paper in the bottom of the pots and gently place the dough seam side up inside. 
2. Cover the pots and bake the loaves at 450 F for 25 minutes, remove the lids, drop the temperature to 425 F and bake for another 22 minutes. By the way, I use convection mode right through the bake to prevent hot spots. This also helps with getting that nice dark golden colour. 

The oven spring wasn’t huge. Satisfactory, but it could have been a tad better. I suspect it was due to my shaping issues. I wonder if my use of water during shaping weakened the surface of the boules and I should stick to using only flour at that point. 

Quite a while ago, I had saved a number of recipes that CedarMountain had posted and I was looking for inspiration when I came across this one in my recipe app. It sounded intriguing with using a sprouted rye berry, ground toasted millet and flax porridge.

Recipe:

Makes 3 loaves

210 g rye berries divided into 100 g and 110 g portions

110 g spelt berries

110 g red fife berries

770 g unbleached flour

700 g water (main dough)

50 g flax seeds

60 g millet

205 g of water (for porridge)

30 g full fat yogurt

23 g sea salt

245 g 100% hydration levain (procedure in instructions)

Sprouting the rye berries

1. Soak the 100g of rye berries in filtered water for about 8 hours. Drain and rinse.
2. Leave on counter rinsing every 6 to 8 hours until you see rootlets that are about the same length as the berry. This took a couple of days. 
3. When the rootlets are as long as you want, rinse again, dry as much as possible and refrigerate until needed. I started mine on Wednesday night and they were ready Friday night when I cooked the porridge. 

A couple of nights before:

1. Mill the spelt, red fife and the remaining 110 g of rye berries. Sift all the flours through a #24 sieve and reserve the bran for the levain. I got a total of 34 g of bran. I reserved 87 g of sifted rye flour for the levain which left me with 5 grams that went into a cambro bucket. 
2. Add the remaining sifted flours and the unbleached flour to the bucket. Cover and set aside.
3. Toast the millet and let cool. When cool, grind in a Bullet and set aside.
4. Grind the flax in the Bullet and add to the millet.

The morning before:

1. After having revived your starter for a couple of days, feed 30 g of it with all of the reserved bran and 34 g water. This will make for a very thick mixture. During the day, give it a couple of stirs when you think of it. I didn’t think of it and it was still smelling quite nicely by the evening.

Before going to bed the night before:

1. Add the reserved rye flour and 87 g of water to the levain. Let sit overnight on the counter. It should have doubled by the morning. If you aren’t ready for it, stir it down and let rise again. Mine seemed to sit at peak for several hours so I didn’t have to stir it down. It was still smelling nicely about 10 hours later.
2. Take the sprouted rye berries and mash them up in a food processor. There will still be a lot of chunks. Place them in a pot with the ground millet and flax seeds. Add 205 g water and the 30 g of yogurt. Cook into a thick porridge. This took 20 minutes on medium low heat. Place in a cool spot for the night. You can place it in the fridge but bring back to room temperature or use warm water for the dough in the morning.

Main dough:

1. Loosen the porridge with the dough water (I had to use my hand as a spoon wasn’t breaking it up), and add to the bucket with the flours. Mix well. The dough felt a lot wetter than what I usually mix at this point (Uh, oh! High hydration dough! Hope I don’t end up with bricks which is what usually happens when I have dough this wet. Oh well, I forged on!). Sprinkle the sea salt on top. Let autolyse for 90 minutes to a couple of hours.
2. Add the levain and mix well. This was very easy due to the well hydrated dough. Do 50 in bucket folds to ensure that gluten development is well on its way. The dough started pulling away from the sides of the bucket so maybe not all is lost! Cover and place the dough in a warm spot to rise.
3. Do sets of stretches and folds about 30-45 minutes apart for the first 3 sets then go to hourly folds for the remainder span of bulk fermentation. Bulk fermentation took 3 and a quarter hours and the dough rose about 40%. The dough moved really fast even though it was a rainy and dreary day. I had bubbles on the edge of the container right from the second set of folds. 
4. Wet the sides of the dough with your hand to loosen from the bucket, and dump out onto a bare counter. Lightly flour the top of the dough again and divide into 3 equal portions of about 825-830 g.  Pre-round the portions with a scraper. I am getting much better at this!
5. Let rest for 30-40 minutes and then shape into a fairly tight boule. This was a bit tricky with high hydration dough but after cinching, I used the scraper to help tighten the boules as best as I could. Place seam side down in rice/ap floured bannetons, cover, and put to bed in the fridge for the night. This turned out to be 17+ hours. 

Baking day:

1. The next morning, heat the oven to 475 F with the dutch ovens inside for at least 45 minutes. Place rounds of parchment paper in the bottom of the pots and gently place the dough seam side up inside. The boules felt really soft and I was afraid they were over proofed. I usually don’t let proofing go that long, even in the fridge, but due to commitments, I had to prepare the dough earlier in the day than I would normally so it had a much longer nap in the fridge. 
2. Cover the pots and bake the loaves at 450 F for 25 minutes, remove the lids, be pleasantly surprised at the oven spring, drop the temperature to 425 F and bake for another 22 minutes or until nice and dark. I had a bit of a minor panic when I realized I didn’t hear the timer and that the loaves were still in the oven. Thankfully, they were just fine with no burnt bottoms! 
3.