Blogs

Conclusion of this bake: sprouted black quinoa really tastes amazing. Seriously.

20% Sprouted Black Quinoa 30% Sprouted Spelt SD 

Dough flour (all freshly milled):

150g      50%       Whole spelt flour

90g        30%       Sprouted spelt flour

60g        20%       Sprouted black quinoa flour

For leaven:

10g         3.3%       Starter

35g       11.7%       Bran sifted from dough flour

35g       11.7%       Water

For dough:

265g      88.3%       Dough flour excluding bran for leaven

127g      42.3%       Water

90g           30%       Whey

80g        26.7%       Leaven

9g              3%        Vital wheat gluten

5g          1.67%       Salt

__________

305g        100%       Whole grain

257g       84.3%       Total hydration

Sift out the bran from dough flour, reserve 35 g for the leaven. Soak the rest, if any, in equal amount of whey taken from dough ingredients.

Combine all leaven ingredients and let sit until ready, around 3.5 hours (26.3°C).  

Roughly combine all dough ingredients except for the leaven and salt, autolyze for 15 minutes. Knead in the reserved ingredients and ferment for a total of 2 hours. Construct a set of stretch and fold at the 15 minutes mark.

Preshape the dough and let it rest for 20 minutes. Shape the dough then put in into a banneton. Retard for 12 hours.

Preheat the oven at 250°C/482°F. Let the dough warm up at room temperature for 20 minutes. Score and spritz the dough then bake at 250°C/482°F with steam for 20 minutes then without steam for 25 minutes more or until the internal temperature reaches a minimum of 208°F. Let it cool for a minimum of 2 hours before slicing.

If your fridge is like mine, you’d know that even fridge temperature can be one of the variables in baking. My fridge changes temperature according to its mood, ranging from 0°C to 4°C. This past week, it decided that it’d function at close to the freezing point. How did I know? Well, the cucumber turned partially frozen at the top shelf and the dough was rock-hard after the retard… Despite being bulk fermented till quite proofy, the dough was a bit under-proofed eventually.

The flavor of this bread suits my taste well. It has a nice balance of acidity and sweetness, not having too much or too little of either. Both sprouted spelt and black quinoa contribute to sweetness and maltiness yet it’s the latter that makes this bread special. Un-sprouted black quinoa is slightly bitter, which is not necessarily unpleasant. However, the bitterness is replaced by nuttiness when sprouted, adding much depth to the loaf.

______

Onion & pea biryani, and tandoori chicken drumettes

Homemade orecchiette and pan-grilled pork chop with 4 kinds of mustard (whole black mustard seeds, whole grain mustard, Dijon mustard and mustard oil) Mustard oil is totally cool!

Portuguese style salted fish fried rice

Lamb barbacoa pan-grilled burrito (with Mexican rice, grilled zucchini & cabbages, and cilantro, wrapped in a 50% masa harina tortilla). Juicy lamb + Lots of textures & flavors

Cinco de mayo feast: 16 ingredients mole with (disappeared) chicken, corn & assorted tomatoes salsa, spiced roasted grouper fish, homemade flour tortillas & fried corn tortillas , garlicky cumin mixed veggies, and pea rice pilaf

Kerala style lamb & potatoes curry with fermented rice & urad dal paniyaram

Please don't count me as pretentious. I truly do not have delusions of grandeur. However, I have a lot of fun putting my limited knowledge and experience to the test. When I spend hours thinking about a bake before the spatula ever hits the flour, it is like a vacation for my anxious mind. Believe it or not, even writing a halfway intelligent blog entry helps my mild anxiety. Enough about me, this morning I saw a very nice looking Turmeric sourdough Bread, at one of the bread making clubs on FB. The poster did not link or post a recipe. That was enough to inspire, Turmeric sourdough Bread, test bake #1! I am always open to constructive criticism and helpful ideas, that could improve on my own ideas. To be continued:

Kind regards, Will F.

There's something about oats in bread that I find compelling! Inspired by the community bake I made Maurizio's Oat Porridge bread. I followed the recipe as written other than to add 25 grams of raw honey to the dough (I just made one loaf). I baked it a bit too hot as I pre-heated the oven at 550 and didn't catch it until 10 minutes into the bake. That said, while the crust was a bit darker than I'd like, overall it turned out well. I tried to load it into the basket with seam side down (to bake on the top) but it was a bit too floppy for me to load the basket keeping the dough skin tight.  I baked it after 10 hours as it was pretty ripe when I woke up. The crumb is moist, firm, fluffy and has a creaminess to it. this is a very nice bread! frank!

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

I considered joining in on the community bake but looking through past ideas, I came across a bake that I had adapted from Mutant Space’s recipe. At the time, one of my friends said was one of the best breads she had ever tasted. 

It has a lot of similarities to the community bake loaf as it also uses an oat porridge. The notes in that thread were very helpful. I was very careful to cook the oats on low to retain the creaminess. However, this recipe also has honey, butter, flax, sesame and sunflower seeds. I also used  Einkorn as part of the flour as I have quite a bit of it and I haven’t used it much at all. 

Hopefully it turns out as well as the first time I made it. 

Recipe 

Makes 3 loaves of ~975 g

740 oat porridge 

Porridge

225 g rolled oats

360 g water

90 g honey

75 g butter

Add-ins

75 g raw Sesame seeds

75 g raw Sunflower seeds

Dough

650 g unbleached flour

200 g high extraction Red Fife flour (250 g Red Fife berries)

210 g high extraction Einkorn flour (250 g Einkorn berries)

75 g flax, freshly ground

550 g water

25 g salt

250 g levain (procedure in recipe)

75 g extra water

The afternoon before:

1. Mill the Red Fife and  Einkorn berries and sift to obtain the needed amount of high extraction flours. Place the required amounts in a tub. Save the bran for feeding the Levain and for another use such as bran muffins. Reserve any leftover high extraction flour for feeding the Levain in the evening and the next day. 
2. Add the unbleached flour to the tub. 
3. Grind the flax seeds in a bullet and add to the tub. Cover and set aside.
4. Take 18 g of refrigerated starter and feed it 18 g of filtered water and 18 g bran. Let rise in a warm place. 

The night before:

1. Add the water to the rolled oats and cook on low for about 16 minutes. When the porridge is creamy, add the butter and the honey. Stir well and put into the fridge for the night. This can be done in the morning if you wish.
2. Toast the sesame and sunflower seeds in a dry frying pan or in the oven at 350 F. They are done when lightly golden and fragrant. Reserve.
3. Before going to bed, feed the levain 36 g of water and 36 g high extraction flour. Let that rest in a warm spot overnight.

Dough Making day:

1. Early in the morning, feed the levain 72 g of filtered water and 72 g of high extraction flour/AP flour and let rise 4-5 hours in a warm spot. 
2. Two hours or so before the levain is ready, put 550 g filtered water in a stand mixer’s bowl and add the flours from the tub as well as the porridge.  Mix on the lowest speed until all the flour has been hydrated. This takes a couple of minutes. Autolyse for at least a couple of hours at room temperature. 
3. Once the levain is ready, add the salt and the levain to the bowl. Mix on the lowest speed for a minute to integrate everything, then mix on the next speed for 5 minutes. If the dough is too stiff, add the additional water while mixer is running. I definitely needed the extra water. At the end of the 5 minutes, add the toasted sesame seeds and sunflower seeds and mix til incorporated.
4. Remove dough from bowl and place in a covered tub. Let rest 30 minutes at room temperature (73F). 
5. Do 4 sets of stretches and folds at 30 minute intervals, then let the dough rise for an hour. I normally do another 2sets of folds but life interfered and the dough went into the fridge early. When I got home about 90 minutes later, I gave it another fold and a bit more counter time until I had to go out again, and it went back into the fridge. By the time I got home, the dough was really cold, stiff and had risen about 30%. 
6. Tip the dough out on a bare counter, sprinkle the top with flour and divide into portions of ~975 g. Round out the portions into rounds with a dough scraper and I let it rest almost a couple of hours on the counter letting it warm up. It still felt pretty stiff when I did the final shaping. Hopefully I will be making bread and not bricks in the morning. 
7. Do a final shape by flouring the rounds and flipping the rounds over on a lightly floured counter. Gently stretch the dough out into a circle. Pull and fold the third of the dough closest to you over the middle. Pull the right side and fold over the middle and do the same to the left. Fold the top end to the center patting out any cavities or big bubbles. Finally stretch the two top corners and fold over each other in the middle. Roll the bottom of the dough away from you until the seam is underneath the dough. Cup your hands around the dough and pull towards you, doing this on all sides of the dough to round it off. Finally spin the dough to make as tight boule as you can.
8. Sprinkle half rice/half AP flour in the bannetons. Place the dough seam side down in the bannetons. Cover with plastic bowl cover or shower caps. Let rest for a few minutes on the counter and then put to bed in a cold (38F) fridge for 8-9 hours. I debated letting it proof at room temperature but by this time, it was 2:30 am so in the fridge it went. 

Baking Day

1. The next morning, heat the oven to 475F with the Dutch ovens inside for 45 minutes to an hour. Then take the loaves out of the fridge. The loaves didn’t look quite proofed so I let the first batch warm up on the counter for 45 minutes first. At the same time, I took out the second batch out of the fridge to finish proofing so they spent about an hour an a half on the counter. 
2. Turn out the dough seam side up onto a cornmeal sprinkled counter. Place rounds of parchment paper in the bottom of the pots, and carefully but quickly place the dough seam side up inside. 
3. Cover the pots and bake the loaves at 450 F for 30 minutes, remove the lids, and bake for another 17 minutes at 425 F. Internal temperature should be 205F or more.

Well I was right, these first loaves were definitely underproofed. The first batch ended up with craters and canyons on the surface from the explosive oven spring. 

I should have also read up about Einkorn first. It would have prepared me for a few of its quirks! 🙄

I've been wanting to try milling some dried corn into flour for some time and finally found some on Amazon a little while ago.  For this bake I used around 17% fresh corn flour so it didn't really add much purple color as I had hoped, but it smelled amazing after milling and did add a nice subtle corn flavor to the bake.

I had some leftover rice so I added some into the mix along with some ricotta cheese to make a nice soft and flavorful dough.  This one smelled like you could eat it before even baking it!

Above you can see the milled four with its slight purple tinge.

Here are the Zip files for the above BreadStorm files.

The bread came out great. The crumb was nice and open and moist and tasted fantastic.  This one is a keeper for sure and worth trying.  The nutty flavor of the spelt was really complimented with the corn flour and made for one tasty bread.

Levain Directions

Mix all the levain ingredients together  for about 1 minute and cover with plastic wrap.  Let it sit at room temperature for around 7-8 hours or until the starter has doubled.  I used my proofer set at 83 degrees and it took about 4 hours.   You can use it immediately in the final dough or let it sit in your refrigerator overnight.

 Main Dough Procedure

Mix the flours  and the water for about 1 minute.  Let the rough dough sit for about 20 minutes to an hour.  Next add the levain, Ricotta Cheese, olive oil, rice and salt and mix on low for 4 minutes.  You should end up with a cohesive dough that is slightly tacky but very manageable.  Remove the dough from your bowl and place it in a lightly oiled bowl or work surface and do several stretch and folds.  Let it rest covered for 10-15 minutes and then do another stretch and fold.  Let it rest another 10-15 minutes and do one additional stretch and fold.  After a total of 2 hours place your covered bowl in the refrigerator and let it rest for 12 to 24 hours.  (Since I used my proofer I only let the dough sit out for 1.5 hours before refrigerating).

When you are ready to bake remove the bowl from the refrigerator and let it set out at room temperature still covered for 1.5 to 2 hours.  Remove the dough and shape as desired.

The dough will take 1.5 to 2 hours depending on your room temperature and will only rise about 1/3 it's size at most.  Let the dough dictate when it is read to bake not the clock.

Around 45 minutes before ready to bake, pre-heat your oven to 540 degrees F. and prepare it for steam.  I have a heavy-duty baking pan on the bottom rack of my oven with 1 baking stone on above the pan and one on the top shelf.  I pour 1 cup of boiling water in the pan right after I place the dough in the oven.

Right before you are ready to put them in the oven, score as desired and then add 1 cup of boiling water to your steam pan or follow your own steam procedure.

Lower the temperature to 450 degrees.  Bake for 35-50 minutes until the crust is nice and brown and the internal temperature of the bread is 205 degrees.

Take the bread out of the oven when done and let it cool on a bakers rack before for at least 2 hours before eating.

Made last weekend for the current community bake.

Maurizio's recipe was mostly followed as written using KA bread flour (12.5% gluten) and KA whole wheat; bulk fermentation took about 6.5 hours in total at 78F. One deviation is that the porridge was pinched in with the salt rather than folded in. The porridge was also a bit on the dry side. The loaf was allowed to proof in a basket for about 2 hours before being put into the fridge for 8 hours, then baked. The loaf was not exceptionally sour, but it would have gone better with the oats if it had been less so.

Apologies for the blurriness of some of the photos below.

After mixing in porridge:

After the 6th fold (so about 3 hours into bulk):

Crumb from a couple of slices near the center (I forgot to document this until I was about to freeze the sliced loaf):

Coated with white and black sesame seeds.. 

When I saw the other day Leslie's beautiful seeded loaf based on Ru's formula I felt inspired and dived into my books and online and on this site to look at different formulas..as it was time for my weekly 4 loaves bake for friends.

In the end I settled for Maurizio's Seeded Sourdough as it included one of my favourite flour: durum...

I did not have the fennel seeds or lemon zest he included and left those out and replaced the fennel seeds with white sesame. Otherwise I more or lest stayed true to the formula and did not go rogue...as I often do with forumulas.

One think I really like about Maurizio's formulas is that he states the temperatures and what to aim for...that is really so helpful, I find.

I used Strong Canadian WW flour being aware of the risk with American formulas and British flours but the rest was Marriages Strong Organic White and De Cecco Durum flour.

After much deliberation I also toasted ALL the seed and then put them in an overnight soaker whereas Maurizio did not toast all the seeds.

It made a beautiful dough and boy did it taste good!

Seeds incorporated during 2nd Stretch and Fold...

30 min bench rest after pre-shape

As baguettes (long batards),of course.  Covered by wheat bran.

Edit 5/18/2019 - And a second run with my adjusted formula to make sure that I understood the process, and because it's a darn tasty bread!  Changes applied:

• Used the double boiler method to cook the oats.
• Added the additional final basinage ("Held Back" on formula sheet) during incorporation of the oatmeal, which definitely made the dough a bit wetter and more difficult and extensible.
• Due to extensibility, wend from divide directly to shaping - the dough almost shaped itself.
• Baked to a richer tone darker than the previous bake.

590g x 2 gros baguettes/long batards 

End of edit.

I was out of state these past weeks when suddenly Dan sneakily posted his Community Bake behind my back.  I’m not big on “challenges” and typically don’t join in as much as I do join in. But there has long been chatter and postings of porridge breads by quite a few of the crew here on Isle TFL, both respected old timers like Ian as well as some of the fine young fillies and colts. Having never incorporated porridge, I though that this would be a fine time to give it a go.

I generally try to use what’s already in the cupboard, which in this case was my supermarket branded quick oats.   But for this venture I went with the recommended BRM (not thick).

As with Paul’s comments about the consistency of the 1g:2g ratio, “About 5 minutes in, the porridge starts to firm up, losing any resemblance to “creamy” or “loose”. “, and as with a good number of others in this exercise, the words creamy texture were a unknown inside of my sauce pan.

The ratio turns out to be a 1:1 volume, but the typical volume measurement for oatmeal is 1:2.  So I did that.  And in my first run, I used that 1:2 volume – which naturally made the entire affair tip toward the goopy side of what dough should be.  Here are the two side by side.  Left is called for in the formula, right is by the oatmeal package instruction.  And even these did not turn creamy.

What this reminded me of is the wonderful “magic grits” scene from the movie My Cousin Vinny, and I‘ll quote the relevant sentence here: “Perhaps the laws of physics cease to exist on your (Maurizio’s) stove”.

Way overhydrated, I was still able to eke out a semblance of a bake, and the bread was delicious

On this second run, I made a few changes:

• Changed the pre-fermented flour from 7% to 15%.  It just isn’t in my DNA to let a dough sit on the counter for a full three hours post bulk rise.  I already put in my time with this dough, so into retard it went after 45 minutes more.
• One final Letter Fold just before the retard in the hopes of giving the dough just a bit more strength.
• Lowered the base dough hydration down from my calculated 76.8% to 74%.  With a dough this hydrated, I felt that my shaping would benefit from dropping the base hydration down ~ 3%.
• Used the recommended 1g:2g Maurizio ratio for the porridge.  Then ran the oatmeal through a potato ricer, which helped break down all the clumps.  Still a continent away from creamy,  but incorporating them into the dough using the French Fold method was successful.
• 45 minute post-bulk rise on the counter due to the increase in pre-fermented flour, instead of 3 hours.
• Rolled the shaped dough in wheat bran rather than dry rolled oats, as I don't really like to look of those flakes on my bread all that much. 

Left: just after releasing steam.  Right: about to pull from the oven 

They didn’t grigne as much as my typical baguettes, but I am not surprised at all given the unique characteristics of the dough.

2 x 450g baguettes / long batards

Here is my (BBGA) version of the formula, also normalized for 1000g

When I began making bread a few years ago it was with a determination to bake nutritious and wholesome bread. What I did not fully understand or appreciate is the broad scope and variety, the many variables affecting the process, the simple and complex beauty of a well baked loaf of bread. And when I think of the countless varations of bread baked over thousands of years it is humbling to realize that each loaf I bake has very likely been baked before by someone else at another time. This was eloquently expressed in a blog comment by Andy (Syd-a) some years ago on TFL:

"I suppose the beauty in bread baking is often not the novelty but in the reproduction in as much a beautiful or faithful way to the old recipes and to add your own personal style to it.  I did nothing new with my baking today, but have made some ok bread...but nothing that hasn't been done by greater bakers previously." 

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/34207/bread-according-ezekiel-49#comment-262728 

So, for today's bake, I too did nothing new but have made some ok bread... nothing that hasn't been done by greater bakers previously!

Turns out my idea for today's multigrain, multiseed sourdough bread has been done before by a bakery called Food for Life; they bake Ezekial Bread  (versions of this previously baked/posted by others on TFL; I baked a loaf a few weeks ago to see what it was like; it was ok) and a multigrain Genesis Bread - my bread today is a similar combination of sprouted and fresh milled grains, much the same ingredients but a different approach, as Andy says,  "....reproduction in as much a beautiful or faithful way to the old recipes and to add your own personal style to it"

I mixed and autolysed fresh milled, whole grain, organic rye, spelt, Marquis flour with organic white flour; then added sea salt and a young levain to start the bulk fermentation. After the first hour I added a porridge of cooked ground chia, millet, amaranth, quinoa, hemp, flax, sesame, cashews, almonds, basmati rice, steel cut oats, yellow corn, yellow peas, a soaker of coarse cracked pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, buckwheat and some mashed sprouted barley, oats, khorasan.  I estimate the FDH at 80%.  I cold proofed the loaves overnight and baked directly out of the fridge in pre-heated Creusets; covered 500 F for 25 minutes, 450 F for 10 minutes and uncovered 450 F for 20 minutes to finish.  I like this bread - it is on my short, short list at the top.