The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

Esopus Spitzenburg's blog

Esopus Spitzenburg's picture
Esopus Spitzenburg

This loaf is a complete game changer for me. This is my first (nearly) 100% whole wheat loaf (I think!) that I have found to be delicious. I'm generally an aspirational high-percentage whole wheater - I'll often make high percent whole wheat loaves wanting to enjoy them, but ultimately finding them overpowering in flavor and sourness.

For this loaf, I used some leftover whole wheat flour from Maine Grains that I had purchased to make matzah. This particular flour was shmurah, or "watched," which means that it was observed from the time of harvest to ensure it didn't come into contact with water. While I've been familiar with the company for a while (I won their lottery for a ticket to the NY Grains Home Bakers Meetup a few years ago!) this was my first introduction to actual Maine Grains flour, albeit in a roundabout way. The flour was marketed as whole wheat, but because I didn't get it from Maine Grains I don't have much other information about it - the taste is so mild that I am slightly worried it isn't 100% whole wheat (I'm reaching out for more info).

Anyway, this loaf has 100g starter (75% hydration, 50/50 AP and WW), 500g mysterious MG flour, 20g vital wheat gluten (Anthony's), 10g salt, 383g water. 45 min autolyse, stretch and folds every 30 mins for 3 or 4 hours. Refrigerated for about 14 hours, pre-shaped cold and rested for an hour, shaped and did a final proof for another hour in the Lodge, baked at 475 first covered, then uncovered (no idea for how long). 

This is my first non-matzah use of this flour, so I can't tell how much of an impact the vital wheat gluten had, but I am very pleased with this loaf. It has a nice crumb as far as I am concerned, and it is flavorful without being super wheaty or very sour.

 

I generally mill my own whole wheat, but I'm afraid to say this flour is far superior to my own... I need to learn how to get my flour closer towards this one. 

 





You can see that I need to re-season my Lodge!

Esopus Spitzenburg's picture
Esopus Spitzenburg

This bake was 50% freshly milled redeemer wheat (the other half being high gluten flour) with the addition of 25% toasted millet seeds.

A mild toasty flavor that is not overpowering, and the millet adds textural diversity to the loaf.

Esopus Spitzenburg's picture
Esopus Spitzenburg

Having to work at home for the foreseeable future, I wanted to pick a new-to-me bread project. I remembered that I have around 20 lbs of rye berries (thanks to GrowNYC grains), and decided to make this a period of rye experimentation, having never made very high percent rye breads. I've been looking for recipes that call for whole rye because I don't want to sift my home milled flour.

To start, I made this loaf from Hamelman's Bread. What a trip! I didn't mix the soaker (I thought the recipe implies to do this), and it only got about half hydrated. Trying to shape the final dough was a losing battle, so I approximated boules, and let them final proof on the baking tray.

Looking back, I should have done the final proof in brotforms, which would have given them a smooth and nice look. Instead the crusts are quite shaggy, even pointy.

Having baked them yesterday afternoon, I just dug in, and I am shocked by how much I enjoy this bread! It has an amazing aroma of imperial stout, and a lovely taste. Not very sour (as I like). The only thing I didn't like was that the crust is a bit tough, although this is solved by toasting.

If you have suggestions for more high % whole rye recipes, please do share!

 

Happy baking, and stay safe!

Esopus

Esopus Spitzenburg's picture
Esopus Spitzenburg

I haven't posted any breads on here for a long time because I haven't felt like I've baked anything different enough to be worth posting. Nonetheless, I still enjoy looking at the site every once in a while, and especially seeing people's blogs about their recent bakes.

This boule is a mix of two doughs (that I also baked separately).
The purple dough was made up of this (+salt @ around 2% of flour + potato):

 

High gluten flour400
Whole spelt flour100
Water377
Sourdough starter @ 75%105
Purple Sweet Potato350


The other dough is also sourdough, with something like 300g high gluten flour and 200g corn meal, + 100g pumpkin seeds.

I had tried making purple breads in the past using beets, but the color really faded during the baking process. I'm very happy with the color (and flavor) of the purple sweet potato bread. I roasted some extra purple SPs, and found them very dry to eat as a veggie. For me at least, they will stay as a bread ingredient, and not as a side dish.

Overall, I was very happy with this bread: it tasted great, and the color contrast was quite nice.

The whole boule:

Esopus Spitzenburg's picture
Esopus Spitzenburg

The intention behind this bake was to use enough barley to impart a distinct barley flavor, while having a low enough % to retain a good crumb. I made it 25% barley flour, which I milled from pearled barley from the supermarket (remainder was bread flour, except for some whole wheat in the starter). I also soaked some pearled barley overnight, and added it to the dough at 15%.

My verdict: I could barely taste the barley flour. If I decide to try this again, I would significantly raise the percentage. I did enjoy the soaked barley in the bread, although the grains that were on/in the outside of the loaf became quite hard in the oven, which was not particularly pleasant (they softened by the next day).

 

Esopus Spitzenburg's picture
Esopus Spitzenburg

Following up on my last blog post (from a while ago!), I've finally gotten around to making a 50% home-milled whole spelt sourdough, and I was very pleased with it. As has been my past experience with spelt breads, the bread tasted of whole grain, but less so than an equivalent 50% whole wheat loaf, and I find this milder taste more appealing.

As I do for most of my sourdough bakes, I generally followed dmsnyder's instructions for San Joaquin sourdough, albeit with different flours-- the aforementioned 50% whole spelt, and 50% high-gluten flour (Glicks brand).

I notice that the crumb is more open on the edges of this loaf. If I want to get the middle of the crumb to be just as open as the outside, is there any obvious change I should be making when shaping? I understand it may be hard to diagnose based on the picture alone.

Best,
Esopus

Esopus Spitzenburg's picture
Esopus Spitzenburg

I recently bought a 25 lb bag of whole spelt berries, and just milled the first of it. For this bread, I used 30% whole spelt, the remainder being Wheat Montana all-purpose. The hydration is somewhere between 75 and 80%. I had to leave the house during the initial rise / folds, so I ended up letting it go for longer than usual before putting it in the fridge to retard overnight. This made the bread slightly more sour than my usual loaves, but it is still quite pleasant.

I find that the spelt is very mild tasting, and it was difficult to even detect that the bread was 30% whole grain! I'm thinking of upping it to 50% whole spelt for the next loaf, or maybe 40% whole spelt, 10% whole rye, or something like that. 

And a pic with the crumb:

Esopus Spitzenburg's picture
Esopus Spitzenburg

In honor of the holiday of Purim, I tried making triangular rolls with a "filling" in the middle -- halved cherry tomatoes and cracked olives. I cut the dough (Pain à l'Ancienne) roughly into triangles, and then did my best to stretch/massage them to a nice shape. They aren't very clean or uniform at all, but I'm generally pretty happy with them. It definitely feels like they are in the spirit of the day! Instead of hamantaschen, I call them hamanbroten :)

I enjoyed reading through this thread about triangle bread before baking. For my second and final bake of the day (San Joaquin), I'm thinking of trying Mini's triangle-pin wheel pattern on boules.

Esopus Spitzenburg's picture
Esopus Spitzenburg

I made these loaves based on the San Joaquin recipe by dmsnyder, but I upped the whole grain content to 50% (mostly wheat, but also a significant amount of rye), and raised the hydration (by an unmeasured amount, but it ended up feeling higher than I had intended). I only cut one of the loaves so far, but as you can see, the crumb was pretty irregular. Is this a sign of a particular part of the process I can improve on? Proofing? Something else? Or is it just normal variation? It seems a little too drastic for that last option.

The bread was light and delicious, but I wondered if this might point to something I can improve upon, which could then make it even better.

Thank you!

 

Pics of the whole loaves are below. I am very much still working on scoring (and this dough was wetter than what I'm used to), but I was mostly pleased with the way the scores came out.

Esopus Spitzenburg's picture
Esopus Spitzenburg


I've been baking recipes from Martin Philip's Breaking Bread recently, and this is based on his recipe for Pane di Genzano. I have a small container of black garlic that somebody gave me, which was just sitting in the fridge, so I added some to the dough at around 4.5%. I also didn't have wheat bran, so I sifted some whole rye flour and used rye bran to coat the boules. I know that I should have left the breads in the oven longer to get darker, as is traditional, but my instinct made me remove them at this level of brownness. If I make them again, I'll try to get them darker.

The bread was relatively simple to make, and had a great texture (very soft crumb), but I was not particularly impressed with the flavor-- it lacked the depth that I've come to expect from good sourdough breads. I was worried that I had put too much black garlic in, but the flavor was actually very subtle, and it possibly would have benefited from a little more garlic (or maybe a combo of roasted garlic & black garlic?).

 

Here's the crumb:

Pages

Subscribe to RSS - Esopus Spitzenburg's blog