The Fresh Loaf

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Horst Bandel mess

Pablo's picture
Pablo

Horst Bandel mess

I read the posts, I was ready.  Even unto adding 10% for my slightly larger Pullman pan.  What happened?  I wish I knew.  The poor thing is proofing at the moment.  Long story short, "the dough should be of medium consistency but not wet, and it will be slightly sticky." Ha!  "Add high-gluten flour as needed if the mix is on the wet side." Try 500 grams!  Whatever I have it's not Horst Bandel's Black Pumpernickel, having vastly changed the ratio of rye to wheat.  Even with the additional flour it was still wet and sticky.

Some descriptions of my process:

Being aware of the extra 10% noted by txfarmer I checked the calculations and found that the home column, listed in oz. is slightly less than 10% of the metric professional formula, so I figured to use the calculated metric column as my guide.  For instance, 9.6oz. in the home column translates to 272 grams, whereas the metric column, which produces 10 loaves, is 3kg and 1/10th of that is 300grams... roughly 10% more than the home column.  So I went with 1/10th of the metric column as my ingredient quatities.

My initial starter wasn't quite ripe so I added a few extra grams, using 20 instead of 15.  My rye culture was tripled by the time that I checked it after 13 hours.  That threw me into a bit of a panic modes since I, at that time, reread the recipe and realized that the old bread soaker was supposed to soak for 4 hours.  That seemed odd to me, I mean bread seems to soak pretty quickly, so I cut that time to 1 hour, figuring that my rye sourdough starter would be less over-developed in 1 hour than in 4 and I only needed an hour to cook the rye berries.

Once the old bread had soaked for an hour I strained it with cheesecloth as best I could.  I thoroughly drained the cooked rye berries as well.

For high-gluten flour I added 12 grams of 75% Giusto's VWG to 238 grams of 12% Bob's Red Mill organic white flour to get a 14% mix at 250 grams.

For rye chops I used Bob's cracked rye.  For rye meal I used Giusto's Pumpernickle rye.

I added none of the final dough water reserved from straining the soaked old bread.

For 20 grams of fresh yeast I substituted 7 grams of instant yeast.

I did my mixing by hand.

It wasn't pancake batter consistency, but maybe waffle batter.  Very wet and very sticky.  Even with the additional 500 grams of my high-gluten flour mix it was still wet and sticky and difficult to handle.  I imagine it will bake up into something.  I put the extra into a glass baking pan and covered it with aluminum foil.  After reading the exciting posts about the upcoming book I felt I couldn't waste anything, even it was to dump it in the compost pile.  Maybe whatever it is will be tasty and I can pass the little one off to the neighbour.

All the possibilities that I can think of are:

  • I made some gross miscalulation in ingredient amounts
  • The rye sourdough was over-developed and moved into proteolytic mode
  • Mixing by machine might develop the dough in a way that is much more difficult to achieve by hand
  • I left WAY too much water in the old bread soaker
  • The cracked rye that I substituted absorbs water way differently than the rye chops specified

I'll try this again in a while.  I'm thinking that I'll use the KA mixer next time and do my damnedest to get the soaked bread well strained.  I'll also cut down the ripening time on the rye sourdough.  Any more ideas greatly appreciated. 

:-Paul

Mini Oven's picture
Mini Oven

What did you decide to do? 

Once you start adding rye, it just gets sticky.  No real way to get around that one.  Use wet hands to handle.   I'm still trying to figure out what you did.  How much rye to bread flour do you end up with?  The chops/cracked sound just fine.

It doesn't sound so bad to me.  I would love a picture of you holding it or trying to.  Thirteen hours on the starter isn't a big deal either, park it in the fridge while you play with the other stuff.  It will fall but it is only the starter, not the bread.

Mini

Pablo's picture
Pablo

He's still wrapped up until tomorrow. 

The recipe had 250 grams of wheat flour, I used 750, so a vastly different ratio.  At least I can crumble this one for the old bread for my next try at it.

:-Paul

Paddyscake's picture
Paddyscake

Looks just like you!  ;  )

Betty

Mini Oven's picture
Mini Oven

If it is still moist but only a day or two old, crumbling in a kitchen machine or blender makes it smaller and then one can forget soaking it, just throw it into the water (or starter/water) when mixing up the dough.   Maybe adding a tablespoon of extra water if needed.  Soaking I find is only for partially dry or dried out bread.  The starter loves old bread and you can get more fermenting time out of the starter by stirring the crumbs into it.  I once had a mature rye starter with more than equal amounts of added crumbs go 24 hours @ 24°C before I mixed up the dough.  A real blessing!

Mini

txfarmer's picture
txfarmer

That's how it should be. As someone who made this bread week after week for a while, I can attest that the bread is MUCH better when the dough is clay like. Forget "medium consistency but not wet". Scared off by all the "too wet" posts, my first attempt was way too dry, increased hydration level steadily in subsequent tries, in the last bake, the dough was so sticky and soft that I can't lift the log into the pan, had to scrape it in, guess what? That was the best one! With high ratio rye, I find that the dough should NOT be "dough like", it should be clay like, with water on your hands and table, it can be shaped without too much trouble.

 

Let us know how the bread turned out, I bet it's not as bad as you think.

Pablo's picture
Pablo

My dough was so wet it would have had to be scooped, not shaped.  The only water, per se, was in the old bread soaker and I thought that I strained that pretty well.  I will try it as wet as it comes out next time, but I'll do the mixing in the KA, not by hand.  I had the dough temp a bit high as well.  He recommends about 84F and I was closer to 94F, I think that may have been an issue as well.  I'll post a crumb shot once I cut it tomorrow.  It may be edible, but it certainly won't have anywhere near the rye flavour that was intended.

Down, but not out.

:-Paul

Mini Oven's picture
Mini Oven

This is done with sauerkraut and bread soakers! 

Love the picture of your fresh baked little one!  Not quite what I expected but I will think about it all day for sure.  I think there are halos appearing!

Pressing out the soaker:  scoop out a good handful and with the other hand cupped cross over the filled hand, squeeze until nothing comes out.  Keep your thumbs out of the way and use them to lock over the back of your hands for more pressure.  Let the water run into another bowl or you'll never get thru it all. 

Mini :)

Pablo's picture
Pablo

I'm glad the picture gave you a chuckle Mini, that is the spirit with which it was posted.

Thanks for the squeezing info, I'll incorporate it in my next try.

:-Paul

ananda's picture
ananda

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/17254/horst-bandel039s-balck-pumpernickel

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/17931/horst-bandel039s-black-pumpernickel

Hi Paul,

You may care to look at the 2 threads referenced above.   In the first one, I developed a formula which paid precise attemntion to moisture uptake in both the cooked whole grains, and in the bread soaker.   This really should help you to gain the correct paste texture.   There are photos in both threads of the raw paste.   I'm pretty confident that these are accurate, having worked with all-rye doughs for a long time now.

Hope these are useful; it's a classic loaf.   My main issue with the formula is in the cooking; I've found the raw paste relatively easy to construct.   It's steaming that I've adopted, in place of Hamelman's very gentle baking on the falling oven.

Enjoy, and best wishes

Andy

Pablo's picture
Pablo

Amazingly, even with my ham-handed handling, the results are pretty tasty.  They remind my husband of little open-faced sandwiches he had in Denmark in the '70s when he spent a summer there on an educational program.

Andy, thanks for the hydration guidance.  I'm sure it will be helpful on my next attempt.

I don't care too much for the molasses taste, but since I altered the flavour profile so severely with all that wheat flour addition, I suppose I can't really comment.  I look forward to seeing what the taste is like with the proper ratios.  I figure to use this bread for my old bread soaker on the next attempt.

Here's the crumb shot.  Since I added an additional 500g of wheat flour the ratio of rye berries to bread is different.

It seems like some of the cracked rye could be softer as well... but again, I'll reserve my judgements until I've made the recipe closer to what it's supposed to be.

:-Paul

Mini Oven's picture
Mini Oven

Is it contagious?

Pablo's picture
Pablo

OK, it's in the oven, so I can't really comment yet, but it was a whole different experience.  Using Andy's table as a guide I used 150g old bread and 150g hot water and sealed them up in a container for a couple of hours.  This time I used the mixer for 10 minutes instead of trying to do it by hand.  The dough was sticky, but I could shape it, not pour it, so that was a good sign.  I added no additional water.  I paid close attention to the dough temperture throughout, which I didn't do before either.  It seemed to be rising nicely when it went into the oven... roughly 3/4 inch below the top of the pan as described.  So, fingers crossed at this point.

Just out of curiosity I wonder why Hammelman specifies soaking the old bread for 4 hours.  It seems like old bread soaks up water quickly.  I don't "get" the 4 hour dictate.

It's still a couple of days away from a crumb shot but it smells nice.

:-Paul

Mini Oven's picture
Mini Oven

Maybe the crusts take longer to soak up and break up...  ?   Especially dark crusty rye crusts.  I just crumble the bread and throw it into the starter.  4 hours there makes a big difference!  I wonder if he ment to do that too?