09th bake. 11/28-29/2019. HWSW, Kamut, KA AP, VWG, vit. C.
Goals: 90% whole grain, 1 kg of dough, 88% hydration, 1.9% salt, 10% pre-fermented flour.
Nov 28, 2019.
6:05pm, intitial mix: 363 g home milled Prairie Gold HWSW, 65 g home milled Kamut, 50 g King Arthur unbleached all-purpose flour 11.7% protein, (478 g flour so far), 394 g water, 15 g vital wheat gluten, 1/8th tablet of 500 mg vitamin C.
(Just now noticed that I did not include the VWG in the total flour.)
7:09pm, folded in: 109 g of 100% hydration levain. Was fed previous day, and two days before that, and spent the last 24 hr in fridge. Levain is a mish-mash of King Arthur unbleached AP flour, Prairie Gold, and BRM whole wheat pastry flour.
Flour now: 532. Water now: 448. Hydration now: 84.2%.
Assuming 18 g AP flour in the levain, and the rest is whole grain, then whole grain percentage is 87.2%.
7:39pm: stretch and fold.
8:09pm: added 20 g water and 10.1 g salt via stretch and folds. Was too aggressive and tore the dough some.
Note: need to up hydration to at least 90%.
Flour: 532 g. Water: 468 g. Hydration: 87.97%. (Update: only 85.55% counting the VWG.)
Total weight: 1025 grams, less what stuck to mixing bowl, plus flour used for dusting, and what adhered from banneton.
8:45pm: shaped, dusted with mix of rice flour, AP flour and WW pastry flour, put in lined/dusted banneton, covered and into fridge. Should have bulk fermented more, but wanted to get to bed.
Nov 29, 2019.
9:21am: warmed up oven and Lodge 3.2 qt combo-cooker dutch oven at 495/475*.
10:23am: Lightly coated inside bottom of pot (not the lid/skillet) with avocado oil, dusted it with corn meal. Dusted seam side of dough ("up" side as it sat in the banneton) with corn meal. Placed a circle of parchment paper over the corn meal on the dough. Inverted the cast iron pot over the banneton and rotated them so the dough plopped into the pot. Made a shallow X score on top of the dough ball in the pot.
Note: as it was too under-fermented, and likely under-hydrated, scoring should have likely been deeper.
10:27am: start bake, covered, 475/455* F. 15 minutes.
10:42am: reduce oven thermostat to 430/410* F, pot still covered. 15 minutes.
10:57am: uncover, reduce oven thermostst to 400/380* F. 50 minutes.
11:47am: Remove from oven. Internal temp = 210.7 F.
Total bake time: 80 minutes. (30 min covered, 50 min uncovered.)
* First number indicates oven thermostat setting, second number is actual temp according to a <$5 oven thermometer.
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1:27pm: cut open. Crumb not very open, but open enough and light (not dense) for a 90% whole grain loaf. Taste is not as good as previous bakes, probably due to insufficient bulk ferment, and not using any rye flour.
Comments
Dave, an 1 hour and 36 minutes is not nearly long enough to ferment your dough. There is approximately 2-3 hours of lag time before your levain starts producing enough yeast to begin to raise the dough.
Maybe you could have retarded the dough (in bulk) and then in the morning put it out to continue the BF. Timing for your BF will vary greatly, depending on your starter and most importantly, the temperature. Even using whole grain, it seems 5 hours or so might be needed to properly ferment the dough using your percentage of pre-fermented flour.
Looks like you are on the right track, by increasing your hydration because of the large amount of whole grain. Next time you could start @ 80%. Then measure out an additional 20% and put in a separate bowl. Don’t add more water until you have thoroughly mixed in your salt. I say this because the salt will tighten the dough considerably. Great that you are autolysing. Let the levain mixed dough rest 30 minutes before incorporating the salt. After the salt is fully mixed, start adding the extra water until it feels right to you. Keep in mind when adjusting the hydration that your dough will slacken a great deal by the time it comes to pre-shaping. After you are happy with the hydration, weigh the remaining water in the bowl. Subtract that from the weight of the initial water in the bowl. Take that number and add it to your starting water weight in the dough and figure the accurate hydration for that dough. Next time you’ll have your custom hydration dialed in for future use.
One other thought. Slap & folds have been a great help for developing gluten on breads of this make up.
How did you determine the percentage of vital wheat gluten? If you haven’t seen this, the formula can be seen here. https://thesolitarycook.wordpress.com/2012/02/01/lets-bake-bagels-part-1/
Is there a reason that you are use soft wheat, all purpose flour, and pastry flour? It looks like you are going for lower protein content, then adding VWG. What is your goal?
Danny
The only soft wheat flour was about 18 gr of Bob's Red Mill Whole Wheat Pastry flour in the levain. I use it only for partially feeding starter/levain, and for partially (along with rice flour) dusting the shaped boule and the banneton liner. It mixes well and ferments well in the levain. Plus I just had it around to use up. Also goes well in pancakes. This levain was about 1/3 BRM WW pastry, 1/3 AP, 1/3 home-milled coarse Prairie Gold.
Prairie Gold is Hard White Spring Wheat, HWSW. Which is what I understand to be the standard order of giving the attributes. Sorry if that wasn't clear.
1234: 1: Hard or Soft. 2: White or Red. 3: Spring or Winter. 4: Wheat or Rye or Spelt.
The reason that I used about 10-13% AP flour (KA's at 11.7% protein) and the 15 g vital wheat gluten was to see if that would help the gluten build around all the coarse bran particles in my home-milled Prairie Gold and Kamut. 15 g was just a guess.
Though, in my book, there is a little prestige and bragging rights to using only actual 100% whole grain flour , water, 100% whole wheat sourdough, and salt.
The flavor of this loaf improved greatly several hours later. And the crumb was not foamy or cakey. It had the right amount of spring to it, but I was hoping for more open crumb.
I do want to get to a point of being able to make a good loaf using only "emergency long term storage" items. So that means eventually no AP flour, and no vital wheat gluten. And likely no Vitamin C, though those can sometimes have a long storage life, just a little degraded.
But.... I think I am going to try to vacuum seal some King Arthur AP and King Arthur Bread flour, and see what that is like after 5 years. Last I looked, someone said white flour lasts up to 6 years when vacuum sealed with oxygen absorbers.
I like your idea of slap-and-folds on the wet WW dough. That might get me where I want without the vitamin C.
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Anyway, the bottom line on this loaf was that the only real down side was the lack of good sourdough flavor, and that was only due to the too-short bulk ferment. I should have stayed up the extra hour, or just started earlier. Everything else was just aesthetics.
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On long term storage... I did have a couple 45 pound sealed buckets of Prairie Gold and Spelt that I opened a couple years back. They were 9 years from harvest at the time I opened them. It was not as good as fresh, but definitely useable. The spelt, being softer, had more broken kernals, and definitely didn't bake up as well as fresh spelt.
I currently have an unopened sealed bucket of Bronze Chief, Hard Red Spring Wheat, whole berries, purchased in early October 2009, so it is likely 2008 harvest. I have another unopened sealed bucket of Hard Red Winter Wheat, also from Wheat Montana, purchased in October 2009, so that could be either 2008 or 2009 harvest. I am curious to open those, mill some, and see how it bakes up. They were supposed to have oxygen absorbers in them before sealing.