The Fresh Loaf

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75% Whole Grain YW / SD Caramelized Onion, Wild Rice, Sprouts & Baltika Porter Bread

dabrownman's picture
dabrownman

75% Whole Grain YW / SD Caramelized Onion, Wild Rice, Sprouts & Baltika Porter Bread

This is another take on a multi-grain bake we did not s long ago that you can find here;

60% Whole Grain SD / YW Bread With Caraway, Rye Chops, Coffee and Cocoa

 

This time we upped the whole grains to 75% and the hydration to a little over 85%.  We dropped the chops and added multi-grain sprouts.  The whole grains and sprouts were rye, spelt and whole wheat.  A combination we like very much as long as the rye equals the other two grains.

 

We also decided to make this bread a little more Russian by using their Baltika #6 Porter for a majority of the liquid in this bread and all of the dough wetness if you overlook the barley malt.

 

We were overcome by guilt and also knowing that The Hempster would not be her kindly self if we left out the seeds so we tossed in some caraway and coriander to perfume this dark bread in a traditional way - but not too much.

 

Hanseata, probably in a fit of non-hempness, is also the creator of her very fine wild rice bread that we like so much.   Thinking she would still be upset that there are no hemp seeds in this bread, we plunked in some cooked wild rice hoping to appease Her Hempness with one last gesture of jester.

 

Keeping with the black theme this bread was calling out for, we also added in some caramelized onions, quite a lot actually, with its deglazed reduced juices as Eric, Andy, Ian and so many TFL bakers are wont to do out ofa  honed professional education and experience for many of them that know what they are doing and a playful, inquisitive wonderment of the strange for Ian and myself.

  

One last shot at anti-establishment went to the Combo YW and SD rye and Desem starter and levain we cooked up over two builds.  As we contemplated the dark path we were about to trip along, in total disregard of anything sane or normal, my apprentice became edgy, quite uncomfortable really and took on the look of one sick puppy. No, it wasn’t Toady Tom’s Toasted Tidbits at fault here even though we put 15 g of them in the mix.

  

It is a look that I see most often right before she upchucks - which she did... then murmuring under her lowly growl something about death to all dark baking masters or another…….. It seemed she got sick after noticing that the bread lacked nuts.  She recovered quickly after the upheaval when she realized there were already plenty of nuts out of their shells in the kitchen as it was - so no extra nuts were required for this Holiday bake.  

  

After all of what would pass for bread 101 on Empress Ying’s home planet, we hoped that this bread would be a shade darker than a dark one should be and also one that we could be proud to pair with the fine Pate Maison that we had baked and smoked up for the Holidays the day before.  Hopefully, both will pair well with a nice Malbec from Argentina, if one could afford it and a plate of various exotic cheeses from other places even more expensive.

 

Hey, it’s the Holidays and who needs another pair of Santa socks, snowflake ties and Snowman stocking caps anyway.  So, as an option, save enough bread by not getting those things and splurge on some foreign hooch and cheese to share with family and friends instead - all while making the bread and pate that much better.

The crust came out dark, shiny and crispy but, after a 24 hour wait before slicing, it went soft with a slight chew.  This bread cut ¼” slices easily without crumbling.  The crumb was not heavy, slightly open, soft and very moist with little gloss.

 

The taste was where this bread really shines.  Subtle coriander and caraway flavors combine with a stronger caramelized onion taste and the chew of the wild rice and sprouts to go with the complex flavors of the porter, cocoa and coffee.  Very tasty indeed. 

 

We have now eaten it plain, toasted with butter, as a sandwich and toasted with pate – just delicious and the perfect pate platter mate.    

  

Method

The method was straight forward if you remember to start the WW sprouts a day before the spelt and rye sprouts since they take 48 hours to chit instead of 24.  The levain was built over (2) stages of 8 and 4 hours each with an overnight retard of 12 hours following the 12 hours on the counter

The flours, salt, Toady Tom’s Toasted Tidbits, ground flax seed and the red and white malts were autolysed with the Baltika  #6 Porter for 1 hour after my apprentice had tasted about 205 ml of the 500 ml bottle to make sure that it wasn’t a covert left over cold war poison of a 3rd kind.

Once the autolyse and levain came together, we did 10 minutes of French slap and folds and then 3 sets of S&F’s on 30 minute intervals where the seeds and rice were incorporated in the 2nd set and the sprouts on the 3rd set. 

The dough was allowed to ferment and develop for 1 hour before being shaped into an 800 g and one near 500 g loaf and panned. The dough was allowed to proof for 1 hour in a trash bag on the counter before being retarded for 12 hours in the fridge. 

Once out of the fridge the small loaf was allowed to proof for 4 hours on the counter.  The larger one proofed for 4 hours on the counter at 65 - 68 F and an additional 1 ½ hours at  85 F in the make shift microwave proofer that had a cup of boiling water in it. 

Both of these should have been baked in the mini oven but Big Betsy was preheated to 500 F instead with 2 of Sylvia’s steaming pans and a 12”cast iron skillet full of lava rocks on the bottom rack.  The stone was put on the very top rack of the oven to project radiant heat downward to the top of the loaves.

As soon as the small pan went in the temperature was turned down to 450 F for 15 minutes of steam. When the steam was removed the temperature was turned down to 350 F, convection this time.

After 5 minutes the bread was removed from the pan and finished baking directly on the oven rack.  The bread was turned 180 degrees every 5 minutes until the internal temperature reached 190 F. Total baking was 30 minutes when the bread was removed to the cooling rack.

The larger loaf was baked the same way through steam but took an extra 15 minutes at 350 F to reach 190 F internal temperature.

Formula

Mixed Combo Starter

Build 1

Build 2

Total

%

SD Starter

5

 

5

0.99%

Yeast Water

10

 

10

2.63%

WW

10

15

25

6.58%

Rye

30

45

75

19.74%

Spelt

10

15

25

6.58%

Water

40

75

115

30.26%

Total Starter

95

150

245

64.47%

 

 

 

 

 

Starter

 

 

 

 

Hydration

100.00%

 

 

 

Levain % of Total

20.14%

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dough Flour

 

%

 

 

Toady Tom's Toasted Tidbits

15

3.95%

 

 

Whole Wheat

35

9.21%

 

 

Dark Rye

141

37.11%

 

 

Whole Spelt

35

9.21%

 

 

AP

154

40.53%

 

 

Dough Flour

380

100.00%

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Salt

8

2.11%

 

 

Russian Baltika Porter

305

80.26%

 

 

Dough Hydration

80.26%

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Total Flour

507.5

 

 

 

Water & Russian Porter 305

432.5

 

 

 

T. Dough Hydration

85.22%

 

 

 

Whole Grain %

74.58%

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hydration w/ Adds

85.51%

 

 

 

Total Weight

1,266

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Add - Ins

 

%

 

 

Red Malt

5

1.32%

 

 

White Malt

5

1.32%

 

 

Barley Malt

20

5.26%

 

 

Ground Flax Seed

15

3.95%

 

 

Add- In Total

45

11.84%

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Multigrain Sprouts

 

%

 

 

WW

10

2.63%

 

 

Rye

20

5.26%

 

 

Spelt

10

2.63%

 

 

Total Sprouts

40

10.53%

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Other Stuff

 

 

 

 

Caramelized Onions.

100

26.32%

 

 

Cocoa

10

2.63%

 

 

Instant Coffee

10

2.63%

 

 

Caraway Seeds

8

2.11%

 

 

Coriander Seed

5

1.32%

 

 

Cooked Wild Rice

100

26.32%

 

 

Total Other Stuff

233

61.32%

 

 

This lunch plate has some thin sliced sliced pate with 100% whole spelt bread, aged super sharp crumbly cheddar cheese, a pickled Serrano pepper, half a Granny Smith apple, some carrot coins, half an avocado, black and pinto re-fried beans, cabbage salad with black raspberries on non fat yogurt. 

 

Comments

gmagmabaking2's picture
gmagmabaking2

A whole meal in a slice of bread... that looks like it would taste amazing. Wonderful. Wonderful.

Diane

dabrownman's picture
dabrownman

apprentice and I have been tasting for almost 3 days and can confirm this is one tasty bread.

Glad you liked it Diane and thanks for your commenting.

gmabaking's picture
gmabaking

Aha, I have finally figured out why you have such achingly beautiful sunsets! The sun grows weary trying to compete with your creative bread making so in one last blaze of glory for the day, she offers you her best effort. Thanks for sharing, both the incredible bread and the sunset.

Hope your assistant is doing well. Mine is a complete fool about butter and today was butter cookie day, she had a few nibbles and samples but can't understand why the rest of the bounty has been stuffed into something called a cookie jar. Humans are so silly!

dabrownman's picture
dabrownman

and your sister too, make me feel like an AZ sunset !   I'm so glad you like the breads and posts my aprrentice, manages to type up even if a little 4 footed.  When there are clouds in the sky the sun literally swaggers as it sets and are night and day compared to the zippo, no color ones when we are cloudless :-(

I think my apprentice would go int anaphylactic shock if she could get into butter.  She ate half a bag off chocolate sugar wafers last night that she pinched off the coffee table as I was napping, but that was after the upchucking earlier.

With some pate on this bread, it has the possiblility of being banned as a narcotic - except in CO and WA where the states would tax it and sell it in mass quantities to those addicted.

For you girls, to thank you for your fine comments - the sunset last night just got better and better.  Enjoy!

Song Of The Baker's picture
Song Of The Baker

Yummy dabrownman.  I just got a smll loaf of rye/pumpernickel-ish bread today that looks a lot like this bread.  Nice and hearty I presume? 

John

dabrownman's picture
dabrownman

This a a hearty bread but is also has the lungs, entrails, lips and innards too....at least it does with the decadent pate we on it :-)  I'm not sure that this is like your pumpernickel since we have yet to find any pumper berries that weren't pumper dimes and I'm not cutting them in half! 

This is some kind of delicious bread with or without pumper berries of any kind.   Give it a go and tell me what you think?  You don't have to have any YW - just up the seed of the SD to 10g and forget about it.  You might like it better with half the onions and wild rice depending on your tastes.

This bread is a pretty nice place to put pate on.  I already finished off a quarter of the huge pate and the  bread !  Had to freeze the leftovers so there would be some for the Holidays.

 

Mebake's picture
Mebake

Yum, DA! Very hearty, and healthy.. Not to mention Attractive!

A beautiful bread!

Khalid

dabrownman's picture
dabrownman

This bread really went well with the pate.  Had to freeze them both so they didn't completely evaporate before our Holiday guests got here.  You and I like hearty and healthy, not to mention tasty breads.  Ever since I made hanseata's wild rice bread I've been hooked.

While writing this post to you I got to thinking about using the vermicelli in Arabic Rice to put in some kind of bread.  I haven't done noodles in bread since sweetbird's buckwheat bread where we used soba buckwheat noodles.  Vermicelli would be great in this kind of bread too, without the rice of course.

Hope your recovery goes well and we can see a bake coming from you in a few more months.

Isand66's picture
Isand66

Sorry I'm so late to the party.  I almost missed your latest masterpiece.  My kind of hearty bread.  That porter must have added a nice deep flavor along with the coffee and your assorted flours and sprouts.

  Great baking DA!

dabrownman's picture
dabrownman

with the new job to do much posting and commenting.  They advertise that the Baltika #6 Porter won best Porter in the world in some competition but I don't see how.  It is OK but only a 70 percenter at best.  Had to buy two to make sure since my apprentice scarfed down the rest of the 500 ml from the bake.

I see you scored another home pager too.  Haven't read it yet but will later tonight.  It sounds very interesting as usual.

Glad you liked the bread and post

Happy Hanukkah to you and yours!