Blogs

This So Not Stollen is based on a modification to a real Dresden Christmas Stollen recipe that was posted by nellapower here:  Refer to it for most of the method with a few exceptions below.

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/25407/dresden-christmas-stollen

I just figured that if you replaced the commercial yeast with SD it would be SD Stollen and if you replaced some of the white flour with other grains..... it would be SD Multi-grain Stollen?  But others might not think so.

I'd be surprised there isn't a SD multi-grain stollen out there somewhere since just about everything in the bread world has already been done by some baker like nellapower already. But it might be called something else like Sourdough Multi-grain Dried Fruit Bread.

Of course that is not all my apprentice did to this recipe either. She is diabolical with her changes and modifications – and can’t be stopped when she gets rolling along.  She wasn't sure SD alone could lift this lump of multi-grain properly so...... instead of the commercial yeast in the recipe we threw in some YW into the SD levain to give it an uplifting boost.

We used a 24 hour 1% starter counter top levian build with all of the whole grains (30%) in the levain. I think long slow levain builds with whole grains enhance the flavor and sour of the bread.  We used home ground spelt, rye, kamut and some farina for fun.  We made our own citrus peels by taking off the skin only with a XOX veggie peeler and boiled them 3 times before drying them and coating them in home made vanilla sugar.

We upped the alcohol some by adding some home made limoncello and arancello to enhance the orange and lemon peel and also used the traditional dark rum and amaretto too - in total about 50% more proportionally so...... no water was required in the fruit soak.  The fruit soaked up all the hooch but it was still wet.

She decided to cut back some of the dried fruits a little and added walnuts and pistachios in their place for a little crunch.  She also added a large amount of YW marinated apple and cherry pieces used to feed the YW (that we had frozen previously) to get closer to the original recipe fruit amounts.  We found them hanging out in the freezer door doing nothing but talking up precious Holiday freezer space – so in they went..

To cut some of the fat, not that it reduces it much with all the butter and lard in this recipe, we replaced some of the cream with Mexican Media Creama.   We really like the flavor of it in flans and thought it would work well here too.  She decided to replace some of the white sugar with dark brown sugar hoping it would pair better with the dark rum which is still made from molasses if you buy the good stuff - but this dark rum wasn't good enough for that.

We added some nutmeg to the spice list too thinking a little more spice would go well with the extra liquors.  We forgot to add the ground almonds to the fruit to sop of some of its wetness and put it into the dough flour by mistake.  So, we added 125 g or bench flour when we added the fruits to keep the overall hydration closer to the original.  We ended up using  50 g more hooch than we should have according to the recipe.

We were basically cutting this recipe in half and the kneading would have been easier with half a lump but, also we changed the methods slightly by cutting in all the fat into the flours before adding the 2 creams.  The creams were supposed to be part of the levains but, with theYW in the levain, we used water there instead.

This made the kneading easy since we could do 15 minutes of slap and folds before adding in the fruits and nuts and the 125 g of bench flour.  The dough tightened itself back up as we folded the add ins into the dough.  This method is much closer to short crust pasty and stollen is much closer to short crust pasty than it is to bread if you ask me.

We retarded the bulk dough in the fridge overnight after allowing it to proof on the counter for 2 hours.  We shaped the dough right after coming out of the fridge and allowed it to proof for 8 more hours on the counter before baking.

We made the dough into 2 boules because they needed to fit in the round tin my apprentice found in the garage.  My apprentice thinks she is related no only to Emperess Ying but also to Rin Tin Tin.  So finding one was easier for her than it would have been for me.

These Not So Stollen will be wrapped in cotton cloth and placed for 6 weeks in a beautiful blue holiday tin with silver snowflakes.  It held last year’s Holiday Topsy’s Pop Corn from KCMO and Lucy saved it for a reason like this..  The outside temperatures at night have finally gone into the 40’s and the daytime temps are in the mid 70’s so we hope that will do for the stollen siesta.

We baked it for 1 ½ hours at 350 F and turned off the oven when the stolen hot 203 F.  We didn’t know what temperature it was supposed to be in the inside and we had to cover the Not So Stollen at the 50 minute mark so it wouldn’t get too brown.  They spread rather than sprang but they will still fit in the tin, yea!!  This Not SO Stollen looks and smells terrific and not being able to eat it for 6 weeks…… should be illegal !!

Once again, we are getting pretty far away from the nellapower’s original recipe for this Modified Dresden Christmas Stollen even though they are still quite similar in concept except for these minor changes :-)  I do plan on storing it for 6 weeks wrapped in cotton like a stollen, even though thsi probably isnlt one.  The Not So Stollen is the perfect name for this different, if not unusual attempt to make a stollen of some 3^rd kind.

Thanks to nellapower for posting her original recipe and her help in our making something close to it conceptually.

 Formula 

New Breads from Old Favourite Flours

Our next-door neighbours recently took a daytrip to my old stomping ground across the North Pennines in Cumbria.   They very kindly sent a text message to me wondering if I might want any flour, as they ended up at the Watermill at Little Salkeld: http://organicmill.co.uk/http://organicmill.co.uk/

In the late 1980s and early 1990s when I baked at the Red Herring Workers’ Co-operative, we used flour from the Watermill, exclusively; organically grown wheat, usually biodynamic Demeter standard, grown in the North of England, and stone-milled using water power…unique!

My choices of flour?

The Miller’s Magic is a flour which was introduced shortly after the mill began to produce Unbleached White Flour using a traditional bolting method.   The last and finest of the sieves produces what are known as the “Middlings”, extracted from the outer portion of the endosperm of the wheat grain.   Maslin flour is a blend of rye flour with “middlings”, which produces flour which is a little grey, reasonably finely ground, and somewhat stronger than might be expected.   And this is a by-product, remember!

My Hexham venture with Nigel; http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/27794/development-day-work-nigel-13th-march-2012  includes a loaf made with Golden Linseed and Light Rye Flour.   I decided to use the Miller’s Magic flour to produce a similar type of loaf, using a wheat levain and a cold soaker with the flaxseed blond.

A few customers ask for Spelt Bread.   I like to use Spelt, and made a lot of it at the Village Bakery in the late 1990s; it was marketed as “Hadrian Bread”, named after the Roman Emperor in charge at the time the Romans occupied Britain, when Spelt was the most common wheat crop.   Even more appropriately, Hadrian’s Wall lies only a few miles from this North Pennine bakery.   My main problem with spelt is that it costs a lot of money.   This is because it is difficult to mill, as the outer husk is attached to the grain, and, because yield is very poor when compared to more modern wheat varieties.   This did not put me off asking for Biodynamic Spelt Flour.   And I made a variation of the Hadrian Bread too.   It uses my regular wheat leaven, plus a “Raisin Must”.   Honey seems to be a ubiquitous “sweetener” found in Spelt breads.   This alternative is a hot soaker of raisins which is blitzed to a fine purée to add to the final dough.

Both formulae are given below, along with a few photographs.

I am now looking forward to offering tastings of these loaves to local people as part of the next stage of the business development plan.

I made a couple of old favourites to justify firing up the brick oven
The Millers’ Magic: Maslin Flour and a Golden Linseed Soaker

Wheat Levain build

Final Paste

Method:

• Build the leaven as schedule and prepare soaker the night before.
• Combine all the ingredients in the mixer using a hook attachment.   Mix 10 - 15 minutes on first speed, scraping down the bowl as required.   DDT 26°C.
• Bulk ferment 2½ - 3 hours
• Scale, divide and pre-shape.   Rest covered 15 minutes; prepare bannetons.
• Final shape; final proof 1½ - 2 hours.
• Score top and bake in wood-fired oven
• Cool on wires

Dinkel Bread with Levain

Method:

• Prepare the leaven as schedule.   Soak the raisins in the hot water overnight.
• Blitz the raisins and water to a must.   Combine all the ingredients with the leaven and must in a mixing bowl with a hook attachment.   Mix on first speed for 15 minutes, scraping down the bowl as required.   DDT 27°C.

• Bulk proof 2 hours
• Scale, divide and mould
• Final proof 1 - 2 hours
• Score the tops and bake in wood-fired ovens
• Cool on wires

 Campagne with Rye Sourdough and Wheat Levain

Method:

• Prepare the levains as schedule.   Make an “autolyse” with final dough flour and water plus the rye sourdough
• Combine wheat levain and autolyse in the mixer on first speed for 5 minutes.   Add the salt, mix 2 minutes on first and 3 minutes on second speed.
• Bulk ferment for 2½ hours; S&F after 1 and 2 hours.
• Scale and divide; mould round.   Rest 15 minutes and prepare large bannetons.   Re-mould and set for final proof in bannetons.
• Final proof 1½ hours.   Pre-heat oven.
• Tip onto peel, Bake in wood-fired oven
• Cool on wires.

Moscow Rye Bread

Rye Sour Refreshment

Final Paste

Method:

• Build the sourdough as described above.   Make the “scald” as follows:   combine the caraway and the red rye malt and dark rye flour.   Weigh the molasses into a pan, add water and bring to a rolling boil.   Tip this onto the flour mix, and add any extra boiling water if there is evaporation.   Stir well to ensure full gelatinisation.   Cover and cool.
• Once sufficiently cool, add the scald to the sour to make the sponge.   Cover and leave to ferment for 4 hours.
• For the final paste combine the sponge with remaining flour and the salt, mix with the paddle beater in an upright machine, 2 minutes on first speed and 2 minutes on second speed.   Scrape down the bowl to ensure thorough mixing.
• Bulk proof for 1 hour with DDT at 28°C.
• Scale and divide, shape and place in bread pans prepared with lining of shortening and coating of rye flour.   Smooth off the top and attach lids.
• Final proof for 1 hour at 28°C, then bake.
• Bake in the dead wood-fired oven.
• Cool on wires; wrap in linen and leave 24 hours before cutting into the bread.

Ok, I’m off to make a croissant dough to retard overnight, plus rolling out the butter, and, an overnight biga for some bread rolls.   I need another delivery of wood…very soon!

Happy Baking everyone!

Andy

In the beginning of the fall, I took my boys with me on a small trip to Vääksyn mylly, a small mill at about 150 kilometers from where I live. It's the mill of choice of Viipurilainen kotileipomo, the family run bakery I visited earlier this year (and featured in issue 2 of my magazine, Bread), and the owner of the mill is my friend on Facebook. 

The mill has a strong feel of old days. This is how buying flour must have been like in the past, I thought: friendly people asking you what kind of flour you had in mind, seeing where the flour comes from as you enter the shop. And apparently I'm not the only one impressed by what they do: when I said I had come from Helsinki, the mill's staff told me that it's not that far compared to some other customers. One customer had just visited from Lapland and brought big bags of flour with her. 

I bought 5 kilos of rye flour, 10 kg bread flour, some oats and "uutispuurojauho", a very coarse rye flour meant for porridge making and returned home eager to try the flours. 

I started by trying to make my regular white sourdough bread using the bread flour from the mill, and noticed that there was something very different about how the dough behaved. I knew the flour is strong in protein, but this was much stronger than I had expected. I worked the dough for a long time, until I got tired and gave up. Without a machine, making a dough with nothing but this flour seemed impossible. I think Dan Wing or Alan Scott talked about this in Bread Builders, saying that strong flour is not very good for sourdough bread... What surprised me however was that even a long autolyse didn't seem to help. 

After experimenting with different ratios of this bread flour and some organic white flour I had used before, I found a combination that works very well. Using just 200 grams of bread flour from Vääksy, 100 grams of coarse rye flour from the same mill, and 800 grams of the organic flour, I was able to create bread I really liked: 

At times, I was ready to give up, but I guess now I understand better than ever that if all flour is not created equal, and what is good for something (making dough with a mixer in this case) is not good for something else (mixing a dough by hand).

But at the same time, I'm still not quite sure about this: I had previously bought some of this same flour from a small local food shop near the mill and made bread with it quite succesfully, replacing only a small part of the flour with spelt... There could be differences in batches, or maybe some other factor in the environment or even my starter was affecting the results? 

--

The next step in my flour experiments came by surprise when I visited Eat & Joy Maatilatori, a local food market at the heart of Helsinki and found their flour mills! At the back of the store, I found a small room with about 10 different flour mills meant for home use. Next to the mills they have big bags of grains, a scale, and a note saying "feel free to use the mills to grind your own flour." I had found heaven!

So far, I have visited the shop twice, as it's always a bit of work to take my kids and go flour shopping in Helsinki. Last week, I bought some rye flour and full grain wheat from the shop. Here's the bread that came out of that visit. 50% of the flour used in the bread is stone ground wheat flour I milled myself at the shop and the remaining 50% regular organic white flour. It's quite dense but tastes delicious with a rather strong wheat flavor (it's amazing how much darker and more flavorful this bread is compared to bread I've made from regular, store bought full grain flour before).

I should really be experimenting with heat and oven improvements, but my head is bubbling with ideas for more flour experiments... Maybe next, I'll mill some more flour and try sifting it to a higher extraction level, or maybe I'll mix in some of the strong bread flour from Vääksyn mylly...

I've been baking slight variations on this 2 kg miche weekly for a month or so and it's time to share.  It's very good.  So good that it's keeping me from moving on to my endless backlog of must-try formulae from books and TFL blogs. 

The objective here has been to bring the Maillard flavors normally confined to the crust (or the surface of a toasted slice), into and throughout the crumb of untoasted bread.  Nothing new or earthshaking about the concept:  David Snyder turned me on to it in his mention of adding toasted wheat germ to a miche at an SFBI class.  And of course the Red Malt about which Mr. Brownman has been schooling us recently is a close cousin.  Other significant influences here are Jeffrey Hamelman's Pain au Levain (process) and Phil's Tarlee Miche (levain building).

The arc of my journey with this formula over the past month has been toward more sieving & milling silliness, higher hydration and bolder baking.  The crumb is cakey-soft at 70%, with very pronounced Maillard flavors and pleasingly mild levain tang.  The crust in the bolder bakes has sung loudly (this past weekend, I thought it was hail on the skylight in the adjacent room) and has that delectably chewy je ne sais quois that boldly baked natural levain crusts provide.

Sieving & Milling Silliness.  The formula contains 3.5% each of 300-325˚F toasted>KA-milled*>50# sieved (pass-through) store-bought wheat germ and wheat bran.  The rationale for 3.5% is that wheat seeds are reportedly 83% endosperm.  So adding a total of 7% germ/bran results in a "90% extraction" flour.  Of course, it isn't "extracted", but synthesized, a la Rev. Sylvester Graham.  Purpose here is not improved nutrition, as was Rev. Graham's noble intent, but indulgent: more flavor and, from milling and 50# sieving, finer texture.  Crumb close-up above right shows barely detectable bits.  Which is good.  We don't care for bits in our table bread :-)  

Click on the table below for a working (once downloaded as .xls) BBGA format spreadsheet with process.

Levain building.  My stiff levain thrives on its Gerard Rubaud feed so well that I tend to use it in the first build (which means the bread has fractional %-ages of spelt, rye + whole wheat -- although I confess I've taken to 50# sieving my Rubaud Mix -- somebody stop me!).  In addition, I cold-retard the freshly mixed levain at each stage, straight to the fridge after kneading, for 12 to as much as 60 hrs before retrieving it to mature for 4-8 hrs @ 70-75˚F.  My levain loves it when I do that for weekly refreshment, so I've indulged its preference for a chilly prelude at each stage.  This stretches the process over more of the week, letting me feel like I'm doing some baking between weekends, even though it's just levain building.  Toasting wheat germ and bran at least gives me a chance to turn on the oven M-F :-).  I have not observed this early cold retard to sour the levain or final product the way retardation of levains or doughs that have partially or fully matured does.

More sieving & milling nonsense experiments are in the works, but none except dab-inspired malt ideas start with whole grains.  Plenty fun to be had with sieves & mill, and just store-bought flours, germ & bran.

Happy baking.

Tom

________________
*slightly hacked KA grain mill for finer milling (and warranty voiding no doubt) than possible with stock unit.

As those of you who have made San Joaquin Sourdough know, my procedure calls for a 21 hour cold retardation during bulk fermentation. The length of the cold retardation was taken from Anis Bouabsa via Jane Benoit (janedo on TFL). While I have often increased or decreased the 21 hours by 3 hours or so, I have been wary of a much longer time, because I feared proteolysis would result in unacceptable gluten degradation.

This week, I did (finally) retard my dough for about 36 hours, partly for scheduling convenience but also out of curiosity. To my surprise, the resulting bread was hardly different than those I had retarded for 15 hours less. There was no discernable difference in flavor, although I had expected a more pronounced sourdough tang. The crumb structure was actually better, in my opinion. The crust coloration was unchanged.

So, here are some photos of the breads made with a 36 hour cold retardation:

I would be interested in hearing about other bakers' experience with prolonged cold retardation of sourdough dough.

Our accompaniment to this bread was Chicken Paprikash.

David

Last night, my wife made this awesome sourdough banana bread from  The Complete Sourdough Cookbook via buddye here on TFL.

So. Freakin. Good. 

Story and recipe at Wandering Bread

Today, I baked. I baked a no-knead loaf, a sourdough loaf, and batch of Hamelman's Cinnamon Raisin Oatmeal bread.

Something else exciting I worked on this weekend...

That doesn't look like much, but it is early stages of porting TFL to Drupal 7, the newest version of the CMS that powers this site.  Drupallers will recognize the Omega theme at play here, which is a responsive theme that will make the site render well on mobile devices like cell phones and tablet computers.  There is still a lot of work to do but I'm excited to finally be started on it.  

Community members have no need to worry.  My hope is to keep the site behavior as familiar as possible, though if I could make things like image handling a bit simpler that would be a big plus.  I will also give folks a chance to try it and give me feedback before I roll anything new out.  And it is still going to be a while... my best guess would be January or February, after the holiday craziness is behind us.

That's about it.  Vancouver has been lovely this fall.  If you care to see pictures of the places we've been exploring, you can do so here in our Vancouver blog.

-F

Hello everyone,

We visited Terra Breads recently and sampled their apple focaccia (loved it! – a really delicious, seasonal bread for fall).
A friend of mine and I were talking about salted caramel awhile ago...a flavor I adore.
Here is what I came up with, trying to re-create Terra Bread’s delicious apple focaccia, with salted caramel, 
here at home :^)

For the apples, I used the Honeycrisp variety; for the bread, an enriched, slightly-spiced dough; and finished with a salted caramel sauce.
This version is sweet! - sweeter than the bakery’s, the caramel sauce being a bit thicker.
On the apple focaccia we tasted from the bakery, sesame and thyme leaves were used as garnish. I did the same, sprinkling on top, when baking was finished and after the caramel glaze was brushed on.
The white color of the sesame was a nice contrast to the rich color of the caramel, and the green thyme leaves added another touch of color (and flavor!). I love fruit and herb combinations and really, really enjoyed the combination of apple and thyme, along with the caramel.

Some were baked as individual ‘focaccie’ and I baked one ring-shaped bread, in a trois frères mold: 
  

The formula and method (based on a Bara Brith dough I made awhile back - less spice and minus the dried fruit):

... the pre-cooked apple slices:

...individual focaccia before baking;                                             close up of overlapping slices, ring mold, after baking:
       

... the baked focaccia, before glazing: 

The crumb of one of the focaccie:
(had to force myself to put the knife and fork down, in order to be able to pick up the camera, to take this picture! :^)    )

 
Yum, I thought this bread quite rich and delicious and was happy to indulge with the salted caramel, a special treat!

Happy baking everyone!
:^) breadsong

Submitted to YeastSpotting :^)

I based this recipe loosely on an old yeast based recipe I had created many years ago which always came out nice and light and moist.  I wanted to make a nice light and airy sourdough loaf using whipped egg whites and cream cheese for a nice flavorful texture.  I like to think my bread making is much more sophisticated now than 15 years ago when I first made this recipe.  Back then I was not into sourdough yet and had just graduated from the bread maker to a Kitchen Aid stand mixer.  Now, I prefer bread that has layers of flavor and a nice chewy crust.

In order to accomplish my goal of a light and airy bread but with a nice crust and layers of flavor I used wheat germ, malted wheat flakes and oat flour to give the finished product a nice nutty flavor.  I used a combination of French style flour and European style flour from KAF along with some white rye and potato flour as well as some raspberry balsamic vinegar.

I have to say the end result was exactly what I was hoping for and more.  The crust is perfect with a nice airy open crumb and the taste is nice and nutty but light.  The malted wheat flakes add a nice element in the crumb as well.

This is a perfect bread for just about anything so I hope you give it a try.

I used my standard 65% AP starter for this recipe.

Directions

AP Starter

227 grams AP Flour

71 grams AP Seed Starter

151 grams Water at Room Temperature (80-90 degrees F.)

Mix ingredients in a bowl until thoroughly combined.  Cover the bowl and let it sit at room temperature for around 8 hours.  The starter should almost double when ready to proceed.  You can either mix in final dough or put in refrigerator for at most 1 day before using.  If your kitchen is warmer than mine which is usually about 70-72 degrees with my air-conditioning you can proceed sooner.

Main Dough Ingredients

425 grams Refreshed AP Starter (65% hydration) from above

150 grams European Style Flour (KAF, you can substitute bread flour with a little whole wheat mixed in)

50 grams Wheat Germ

200 grams French Style Flour (KAF, you can substitute AP flour if necessary)

50 grams Oat Flour (KAF)

50 grams White Rye Flour (KAF)

65 grams Potato Flour

40 grams Malted Wheat Flakes

224 grams Softened Cream Cheese (1 Package)

132 grams Egg Whites (4 large eggs)

25 grams Raspberry Balsamic Vinegar

16 grams Seas Salt or Table Salt

343 grams Water at Room Temperature

Procedure

In the bowl of your mixer using your beater attachment whip the egg whites on the highest speed until stiff peaks are formed.  Set aside while you mix the main dough below.

Mix the flours, and malted wheat flakes and wheat germ with the water in your mixer or by hand for 1 minute.   Next fold in the egg whites by hand and let it rest covered in your bowl for 20-30  minutes.   Next cut the starter into small pieces and add to the flour mixture in the bowl and also add the oil, salt, cream cheese and vinegar.  Mix for 4 minute to incorporate all the ingredients. I mixed on speed #1 for 3 minutes and speed #2 for 1 minutes.   Note this is a very wet dough but resist the urge to add too much flour as you don't want the dough to become too stiff.

Next take the dough out of the bowl and place it in an oiled bowl or container.  Do a stretch and fold and rest the dough uncovered for 20 minutes.  After the rest do another stretch and fold and cover the dough and let it rest for 10 minutes.  Do one more stretch and fold and put the dough into a lightly oiled bowl and let it sit at room temperature covered for 2 hours (if it is already in a bowl just make sure to cover it).   (Note: since this dough is very wet, I did 2 extra stretch and folds in the bold and one additional one right before putting it in the refrigerator).  After 2 hours you can put the dough into the refrigerator for 24 hours or up to 2 days before baking.    I baked the bread about 24 hours later.

The next day (or when ready to bake) let the dough sit out at room temperature for 2  hours.

Next, form the dough into your desired shape and put them in floured bannetons, bowls or on a baking sheet and let them rise covered for 2 hours or until they pass the poke test.  Just make sure to not let them over-rise.

I made one large boule and used a basket with a floured linen liner.

When read to bake, score the loaf as desired and prepare your oven for baking with steam.

Set your oven for 500 degrees F. at least 45 minutes before ready to bake.  When ready to bake place the loaves into your on  your oven stone with steam and lower the temperature immediately to 450 degrees.    When both loaves are golden brown and reached an internal temperature of 200 degrees F. you can remove them from the oven.  Since this was one large loaf it took about 55 minutes to bake.  (Note: since I made one large Miche I had to lower the temperature to around 425 degrees F. with about 20 minutes to go so the crust would not get too dark).

Let the loaves cool down for at least an 3 hours or so before eating as desired.

It should come as no surprise to you that I need to lose weight.   My weight-loss regimen is not from a book.   No one would buy a book called “New Diet Secret: Eat Less, Exercise More and Lose Weight!”   This diet along with a crazy busy work life has kept me from baking much lately.  And when I bake, I experiment with “healthy breads”.   I figure I’m not consuming empty calories if my bread has millet or whole oats or cracked wheat.  Plus, some of these more nutritious breads taste really great.

Today I baked a batch of Professor Hamelman’s “Five-Grain Levain”.  The formula includes bread flour and whole wheat flour and calls for a soaker of cracked rye, flaxseeds, sunflower seeds, and oats.  I may be missing something, but I only count three grains there: wheat, rye and oats.  Maybe he’s including the seeds in the grain count. He is a professor, so he must be right.

Anyway…I couldn’t find any cracked rye and my rye-cracker is in the shop.  So I substituted cracked wheat, thus producing a two-grain levain with seeds.   Otherwise, I followed the formula.  I made two batards, one about 1.5 pounds and one about 1.8 pounds, and a few rolls.  The rolls were semi-retarded at 55 F  (San Francisco November) while the loaves baked and the oven re-heated.  Here’s a family photo:

This bread is very moist and light of crumb, with a crispy crust.  Tons of flavor….as you can see below:

So lets talk about multigranularity.  I think the rye would have added a nice touch to this bread.  But I couldn’t tell you why.  I have made others of Hamelman’s multigrain breads and enjoyed them to varying degrees.  I have a sense of the flavor of each of the common multigrain bread ingredients.  But I haven’t experimented enough to know what combinations of grains and seeds I like best.  That is a project for the future.

Meanwhile, one question:  is there any reason why I couldn’t take this Five-Grain Levain formula and substitute other whole grains and seeds in the soaker? 

Hamelman’s Whole-Wheat Bread with a Multigrain Soaker (a bread with a yeasted pre-ferment) calls for cracked wheat, coarse cornmeal, millet and oats in the soaker.  And I like that bread a lot.  It has an overall hydration of 78% (plus 5% honey), while the Five-Grain Levain has an overall hydration of 98%.  So, of course, I’d need to adjust the hydration to reflect the thirstiness of the ingredients.  But other than that, are there any issues with grain/seed combos in sourdough I should take into account.

Thanks.

Glenn