The Fresh Loaf

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barley

hanseata's picture

Fraenkisches Bauernbrot - Farmer's Barley Rye From Franconia

July 10, 2010 - 2:46pm -- hanseata
Forums: 

SOAKER:

200 g rye flour

134 g barley flour (or meal)

   6 g salt

250 g water

 

STARTER:

  93 g whole wheat mother starter (75% hydration, as in "Whole Grain Breads")

215 g whole wheat flour

 66 g barley flour (or meal)

206 g water, room temperature or lukewarm (depending on outside temperature)

 

FINAL DOUGH:

all soaker and starter

135 g whole wheat flour

 12 g salt

   7 g instant yeast

SumisuYoshi's picture
SumisuYoshi

Purple Multigrain Loaf Crumb

This bread is heavily inspired by the Multi-grain Extraordinaire recipe from Bread Baker's Apprentice and really, it came out of my desire to stuff even more grains and grain flavor into that bread. I first made the Multi-grain Extraordinaire back in late September, and while I liked it quite a bit I was really looking for a bit more graininess, so to speak. I hadn't thought about that again until this weekend, as I knew I needed some lunch bread but I wasn't sure what to make. When I was digging in the cupboard for the pasta I needed for a pumpkin stew (more on that in a later post!) I saw the forbidden rice and purple barley I got a while back. Suddenly I had it, time to rework the recipe in search of more 'graininess'! In light of the supposed royal nature of the forbidden rice (although that is probably mostly marketing) and the similarity in color of the cooked rice to the ancient Royal Purple, I decided to name this Royal Grains Bread.

Purple Multigrain Baked Loaf

Royal Grain Bread Recipe

Makes: One 2 lb loaf or 6-12 rolls

Time: 2 days. First day: soaker and starter. Second day: mix final dough, ferment, degas, shape, final rise, bake.

Ingredients: (baker's percentages at the end of hte post)

Grain Soaker:

  • 4 oz. assorted grains (I used 1 oz. amaranth, 1 oz. millet, 1 oz. whole oat groats, .5 oz. corn meal, and .5 oz. flax meal)
  • 3-4 oz. water (enough to just barely cover the grains)

Stiff Sourdough Starter:

  • 1 oz. 66% hydration levain
  • 6 oz. bread flour
  • 4 oz. water

Final Dough:

  • 11 oz. of above starter
  • 4 oz. bread flour
  • 4 oz. other grain flours (I used 1 oz. forbidden rice flour and 3 oz. purple barley flour, both home ground)
  • 1.5 oz. brown sugar
  • 1½ teaspoons salt
  • 1 oz. cooked brown rice
  • 1 oz. honey
  • 4 oz. milk
  • 1-2 oz. water (this will depend on how much your grains absorbed)

Directions:

  1. Mix the grains and water for the soaker together, use just enough water to cover the grains and then cover the container and leave it to sit at room temperature overnight.
  2. Mix the 1 oz. of levain (if you aren't using a stiff levain you can adjust the quantities for whatever hydration levain you are using) with 4 oz. of water until well integrated and nearly homogeneous looking. Incorporate the water and levain mixture with the bread flour until a ball starts to form. Let the dough rest for 5 minutes covered. Knead the dough briefly, just enough to get it well mixed and smooth, no need to develop the gluten yet. Return the dough to a covered bowl or container and leave at room temperature to ferment. Depending on the strength of your starter and room temperature this could take from 3-12 hours. When I made it the room temperature was about 63 degrees and it took nearly 12 hours. If you know your starter will develop fairly rapidly, start this early enough to degas the dough and refrigerate after it has doubled, otherwise leave it at room temperature overnight.
  3. The next day remove the starter from the fridge ( if it was put in the fridge) about an hour before you plan to start making the bread.
  4. Stir the rest of the bread flour, the alternate grain flours, salt, and brown sugar together in a medium large bowl. I like to mix the starter in with the liquid so it incorporates into the final dough more easily, so stir together the milk, honey and 1 oz. of the water (reserve the rest in case needed later) and then mix with the 11 oz. of starter. Now pour the starter and liquids, the soaker, and the brown rice into to the bowl with the dry ingredients. Mix all of the ingredients together until they just begin to come together in a ball.
  5. Turn the dough ball out onto a lightly floured counter and knead for 6-10 minutes, or until you get adequate gluten development (check with a windowpane test). In my experience making this bread the dough will generally be stickier than you would expect from the hydration level and stiffness of the dough, I think this has to do with the grains from the soaker. Try to avoid adding too much flour during the kneading, as long as the dough is stiff enough that it seems to be able to hold a shape it will turn out fine, just use a bench scraper to recover any bits that stick. Lightly oil a bowl big enough to hold the dough when doubled, form your dough into a ball, roll it around in the oil, cover the bowl and set the dough aside to ferment at room temperature. Again, the time on this will vary depending on your starter, but 2-6 hours is a good estimate. No matter how long, when the dough has nearly doubled it is ready.
  6. If you want to make a freeform loaf: Now that your dough has doubled, or nearly doubled, turn it out and gently degas the dough, flattening it into a vaguely rectangular shape. Give the dough a letter fold (folding it into thirds along the long side) and seal the seam with the edge of your hand if needed. Now you have a preshape for a batard, fold once again to ensure good surface tension. Give the dough 3-5 minutes to rest before rolling it with your hands on the bench to make the ends thinner and extend them. If you have a couche use it to support the loaf as it rises, otherwise you can use parchment paper dusted with flour or sprayed with spray oil, just put objects to the side of the loaf to hold the parchment in place during the rise, and cover the loaf with oil sprayed plastic wrap. If you want to make a sandwich loaf: Starting just after the letter fold, flip the dough and gently roll it back and forth with your hands to even out the loaf shape. Once your loaf is more evenly shaped, tuck the ends underneath and briefly roll it again before placing the dough in an oiled 8½x4½ loaf pan. Cover the loaf pan and set it aside for the final rise. If you want to make rolls: Divide the dough into 6-12 of evenly sized pieces of dough, briefly preshape them into rounds and let them rest covered for 2 minutes so the gluten relaxes a bit. After the rest, shape the rolls into nice tight little boules. The method I use is to put my hand over the ball of dough, surround it with my fingers and thumb. Then while applying slight downward pressure and slight pressure with my thumb and pinky, rotate my hand a quarter turn counterclockwise, release the pressure slightly and rotate back to the home position. Repeat this until the dough forms a nice tight little ball. Place the shaped rolls on parchment paper on a baking sheet, cover, and set aside to rise.
  7. The final rise should be shorter than either of the previous two, and be careful using a poke test on this bread as the inclusion of flours with no or little gluten will make it a bit more delicate. For me, the final rise took about 90 minutes (but I had also moved to putting it in an oven with just the light off because I was going to need to go to bed!). If you are making the loaf in a loaf pan, it should rise to about 1/2 to 1 inch above the edge of the pan. The freestanding or loaf pan loaves would benefit from a very light scoring, no more than 1/8 to 1/4 of an inch deep. Preheat the oven to 350° with the rack on the middle shelf. If you wish to top your loaves or rolls with seeds or some other garnish, spray them lightly with water and top shortly before putting them in the oven.
  8. Bake for 20 minutes, at which point if you were making 12 rolls there is a good chance they will be finished. If you are making larger rolls or loaves rotate 180º (or earlier if you know your oven heats very unevenly) and continue baking for another 10-20 minutes on freestanding loaves and 25-40 minutes for pan loaves. As usual, the loaves should sound hollow when tapped on the bottom if they are finished and be around 185-190º. The color of the finished loaf will vary widely depending on the grains and grain flours you have used.
  9. Remove the baked loaves to a cooling rack (taking pan loaves out of the pan) and allow to cool for 1-2 hours before slicing.
  10. Enjoy the delicious graininess!

Note: If you wish to make this loaf without levain, skip the levain step and in the final dough use: 10.5 oz. bread flour, 5.5-6.5 oz. water and add in 2¼ tsp. instant or active dry yeast (add the instant to the dry ingredients and the active dry to the water and stir well). The rise times will of course be very different, probably around 1.5 to 2 hours for the first rise, and 1-1.5 hours for the second rise.

 

Some more photos:

Forbidden Rice and Purple Barley:

Forbidden Rice and Purple Barley

Shaped and Panned Loaf:

Purple Multigrain Shaped Loaf

Risen Loaf:

Purple Multigrain Risen Loaf

Baker's Percentage: Soaker:

  • Grains 100%
  • Water 75 to 100%
  • Total: 175-200%

Starter

  • Bread Flour 100%
  • Water 66.7%
  • 66% Levain 16.7%
  • Total 183.4%

Dough

  • Starter 137.5%
  • Bread Flour 50%
  • Alternate Flours 50%
  • Brown Sugar 18.8%
  • Salt 4.8%
  • Honey 12.5%
  • Cooked Brown Rice 12.5%
  • Milk 50%
  • Water (about) 12.5%
  • Soaker 100%
  • Total: 448.5%

Straight Dough Version:

  • Bread Flour 72.4%
  • Alternate Flours 27.6%
  • Brown Sugar 10.3%
  • Salt 2.6%
  • Honey 6.9%
  • Cooked Brown Rice 6.9%
  • Milk 27.6%
  • Water 41.4%
  • Soaker 55.2%
  • Total: 250.9%
Mebake's picture
Mebake

I came back from vacation!

I made this Barley batard (1/3 barley , 2/3 Whole Wheat), hearth bread.

Al though i used volume measurements, it turned our more or less sufficient. here it goes:

1 cup naked barley flour (1/3)

2 Cups Whole Wheat flour (2/3)

1 table spoon salt

1/4 teaspoon yeast

1.85 Cup of water, so roughly the final dough is 62% hydration (i could not elevate the hydration further because of the barley flour which kind of hinders the shaping process).

I used peter reinhart's method of delayed fermentation: i.e. split the doughs of each flower into halves, one contains yeast and goes to the fridge for 24hrs, while the other contains salt and remains outside in a warm place for 24hrs.

24hrs later, i combine the Biga (yeasted one) with the soaker (salted one), and make the bulk dough , and leave it to ferment for 1.5 hours until roughly 1.5 X the size.

Then, i scrape the fermented dough into a workspace WITHOUT de-flating it, and formed a Batard. At this point i heated the oven to 500 F, or 260 C while the bartard is left to ferment the final fermentation.

Half an hour later I used lava rocks in a Teflon cake mold and pured hot water to creat steam, and put the batard onto a parchment paper, and into the oven. the batard streched sideways, but oven rise compensated!

50 minutes later : VOILA!        VERY TASTEY

The loaf

Crumb

dragon49's picture

Salt Free BarleyBread Machine Bread

October 27, 2009 - 11:33am -- dragon49
Forums: 

I forgot to add salt to a Barley Bread recipe that I made up.  I was worried about an oversized Yeasty bread, or a Bread that had not formed correctly.  My internet research led me to sites that advised on not cutting out salt, as it regulates the yeast activity and helps form the bread.

 

None of this advice was true.  I suspect that the advice served to sell salt.  Other than being a little bland tasting, nothing was wrong with the Bread.  It formed and rose normally.

apprentice's picture

She's back!

July 21, 2009 - 8:41am -- apprentice

Hi everyone! Can't believe 10 months have gone by since I posted. At least, that was the timing of my last blog entry. I peeked in from time to time, and thought often about some of the great people here that I was getting to know and their great breads.

Life just got busy. It's still busy, but I miss the interaction with fellow enthusiasts and hope to start posting regularly again. One lesson I learned. Trying to keep up with ALL the posts was insane and probably exponentially more insane now with the increased numbers visiting the site, reading and posting.

janij's picture

Barley Flour

May 20, 2009 - 6:26pm -- janij
Forums: 

I have a lot of barley and a mill.  I was wondering if anyone uses regular milled barley in their bread?  I know it doesn't have gluten so it would have to be added in small quanities.  I am just wondering if I could add some to my wheat or white bread.  Anyone have any experience with this?

Kuret's picture
Kuret

This weekend I decided to make some Swedish style breads reminded of a conversation Ive had in an arlier thread about the ultimate book on baking ryes. So instead of rushing out to get the "holy grail" of rye books I decided to make some from a Swedish baking book that I own.

The rye bread Is actually one of the best ryes I have ever made although the method seemed strange to me. First of you make a sourdough preferment with an hydration of roughly 60-65% wich is really dry for a whole rye dough. This is left to ferment for at least 12 hours after wich the final dough is made with a small kicker of commercial yeast, the recipe calls for fresh yeast wich is availble all over Sweden so that is what I used. The dough then ferments 60 minutes and is punched down once during fermentation after wich it is shaped and left to ferment for 45-60 minutes more before going into the oven for 50 minutes. Really great bread, can´t stress that enough!

The barley flatbread was a big faliure, It was far too salty and that resulted in to slow fermentation and though salty crumb. I then re read the recipe and realised that there must be a mistake, the authour specifies 2.3% syrup and 3.3% salt (roughly) which I think is a mix up the salt seems much more resonable at that level. Will probably try them again some day as I love the taste of them with some hot bean stew.

EDIT: Ho hum! Here is a pic! The loaf on the right has been man handled a and that is the reason for the flour being a bit splotched over the top of the loaf but the other is as beautiful as a newborn baby, whitch it is in some regard...

wholegrainOH's picture
wholegrainOH

Lesbos flatbread   Lesbos loaf

 Lesbos Barley flatbread                                               Lesbos Barley Loaf                                                          

Wanted to provide bread in ancient Greek style for a class I'm teaching on ancient theatre.  A fourth century BCE Sicilian-Greek gourmet, Archestratos of Gela, praised the honey-sweetened barley bread of Lesbos in his book, Hedypatheia (Life of Luxury). According to legend, the bread of Lesbos was so famed that Hermes regularly got bread there for the other gods. There are, of course, no recipes. Herewith a reconstruction, entirely guesswork, in the absence of anything like firm records:

Desi Indian Barley flour, in a three to one ratio with

King Arthur Traditional whole wheat flour

Wildflower honey, from a beekeeper in NE Franklin county, Ohio

Sea salt

Olive oil

Giza sourdough

 

There was no dry yeast in antiquity, of course; the sourdough used here was collected in the ancient Egyptian site of Giza and obtained from Sourdoughs International. Barley flour was used by the Greeks for everyday bread; Solon at one point says that leavened bread was only used on feast days; in Peace, Aristophanes has a character refer to eating only barley bread, with the sense being that of a diet of bread and water. Also obviously, no refined or enriched bleached (or unbleached, for that matter) white flour would have been available. I also added a bit of wheat gluten to help there be a rise, even for a flat bread—which, again, would have been pretty much the norm for everyday use. The Egyptians of the period (and much earlier) used conical earthenware pots to bake loaves of bread in; I’m not aware of any similar ware in classical Athens.

Project was fun, And students devoured the flat loaves while looking at images of ancient theatres.

Alan

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