Hamelman Multigrain with 24-Hour Retard
I recently had to revive my starter. I had attempted dabrownman's stiff, sour rye build method, and I must have screwed it up somehow, because it wasn't activating well. I also was putting it straight into levains, which I had done before with decent results, but I now prefer to do at least one build prior to making the levain. So I resorted to rebuilding it with 2-1-1 feeds, 1-1-1 feeds, and 1-2-2 feeds until it was very active, before allowing it back in its cave (the fridge). The evening of the levain build I did one refresh to nearly double it, and this worked well. Mistakes are instructive. I omitted the commercial yeast in the recipe, and yet I have a more open crumb than the one I made before that included it.
This is my best bread yet, and I believe revving up the starter and the 24-hour retard were significant factors. The crumb shot is from the loaf on the right, and the crumb was tighter on the left one, since the cuts were not very successful. All fermentation was done at 82F (starter, levain, 30-minute autolyse, bulk, and an hour of post shaping proofing before the cold retard). I did 4 stretch and folds every 30 minutes during a 2-hour bulk, although Hamelman only calls for one. I'm not experienced enough to know how much of a difference this made.
Comments
That is one very good looking crumb and two great looking loaves. I struggle with the cuts but it's all (I think) about practice. Good work. You're making me hungry!!
Thank you! It took me a lot of bakes to get a crumb this nice.
Hi, Phil:
Congratulations for achieving such nice looking loaves! So this is Mr. Hamelman's multigrain bread that everyone raves about, I've got to try it some day...
Happy Baking
Yippee
Thanks for the kind words. The loaf has a large soaker with cracked rye, flax seeds, sunflower seeds, and rolled oats. It's a really tasty bread.
Is it in his book "Bread"? Your loaves look so tasty.
Thanks a lot! Yes, it's the latest edition of bread. This is the book I've been working from almost exclusively. It's very instructive. The only drawback is that the recipes are for bakery sized bakes, and in scaling it down to home bakers he used ounces instead of grams. So I'm always having to convert, since my scale doesn't weigh "2.7 ounces" of anything. There are also lots of recipes, so you build a great repertoire with this book. I started with BBA, and I still like that book, but I haven't used any of his SD recipes.
What book do you mainly work from, if any?
I base my inspirations mostly from Bread and Advanced bread and pastry. Sadly, I don't have them with me, I only read them in the library then take note of the recipe I want to try then make adjustments to fit my baking conditions.
Really lovely. I'm getting close to knuckling under and buying a copy of Bread. But I find so much inspiration on what us 'ordinary' folks publish here on TFL that I've been resisting for well over a year.
Good shaping and scoring are such key components to the final product, and I think that the scores and bloom on the left loaf are just fine. Considering the overall bloom across the entire loaf, it seems as though you did hit the mark. And long cold retard is another key component In my book. Congrats.
alan
I'm surprised you don't have it. BobS recommended it and I've never looked back. Thanks for your kind remarks. You and the other big time TFLers helped me get her 5 times faster than I otherwise would have.
'You and the other big time TFLers'.
Apparently you have me mistaken for the heavy hitters on TFL. Although I like the association, it just ain't so, Joe. I've gotten pretty good at my little corner of the baking world, emphasis on little. By sheer force of repetition, luck and some basic skill set which I've honed over time. I've been able to cloak my true baking identity as one who is mistaken for these true cognoscenti, who would expose my limitations within minutes ;-) .
But - I do appreciate the thought!
I currently own only two books - Peter Reinhart's BBA, and FWSY. after that it is almost all TFL for me.
alan
taste fantastic.
I'm not sure what happened o your NMNF starter. It is supposed to be a long retarded, small amount of stiff 66% hydration, whole grain, rye starter. You take a bit of it, no more than 10 g, every time you bake, to build a 3 stage levain using progressively larger feedings of flour and water over 8 -12 hours for a loaf of bread. You don't want to skip this step.
I just built a 150 g bran levain yesterday for tomorrow's bake using 10 g of 24 week retarded NMNFstarter. Since it is so old after such a long retard, is was a bit slower as one would expect. It doubled 2 hours after the 3rd feeding at the 10 hour mark but the kitchen is 80 F and the temp was about 108 F outside.
Don't give up on it. There is no easier way to keep a starter and I've made hundreds of different breads with it over the last few years.
Well done and happy baking
Thanks! Yes, I was unclear on the concept of the builds that must take place to create your levain. Plus, I couldn't reconcile the Hamelman levain recipes with your 3-stage levain build (math anxiety?) in order to feel confident substituting yours for his. My other challenge is finding the time required to build up to an overnight levain build (let alone following that with a levain retard). So I was simply taking the NMNF starter out of the fridge and building a 12-16 hour levain with it, which wasn't adequate.
I love the concept, though. I just prefer not to bake on Mondays after work, since this is pretty disruptive on a school/work night.
any recipe is simple enough and the math not bad at all. If the recipe calls for 150 g of levain the NMNF 3 stage levain build allways fetures the same builds. The first feeding of flour and water each matches the starter used, the 2nd feeding for flour and water is twice the first and the 3rd feeding is 4 times the first.
if the starter is 1 then the first feeding is 1 flour and 1 water or 3 total. The 2nd feeding is 2 flour and 2 water or 7 total after the 2nd feeding . The 3rd feeding is 4 flour and 4 water making 15 total after the 3rd feeding.
This is the rule of 15. To find out how much NMNF starter to use and the first feeding amounts just take the total levain needed and divide by 15. So 150 g of levain needed divided by 15 is 10 g So the starter required is 10 g and the first feeding of flour and water is also 10 g
The 2nd feeding is 20 g each of flour and water (twice the first feeding). The 3rd feeding is 40 g each of flour ndn water (4 times the first) all together you get 10 g of starter plus 70 g each of flour and water making 150 g total.
Happy baking
I've been super busy at work and couldn't bake for a few weeks. I will redo a NMNF starter soon. In the meantime I had great success with taking my neglected starter out, feeding it at room temp 1:1:1 overnight, then 1:2:2 every 12 hours for a couple more days. This was very little effort and make it super active. In fact one loaf over proofed in the fridge, no less.
How was the meet-up?