We are invited tonight to a Burns Night supper - long-running, we've been going for years!  I thought this time I should try to take some bread (though I wasn't confident enough to stop them buying bread - must be more confident!)

I recently purchased Bertinet's Crust, and Hanseata (I think) mentioned the Breton Bread, so I thought I'd give that a go, as unusually I had some fresh yeast.  As this was a new recipe, I decided to also do DSnyder's Pugliese as usually that works really well for me.  18 people so it felt like a big quantity was required - so I did around 2kg of each, which was a fun experience in itself, as I've not done these volumes before!

Ingredients - Breton Bread

Pre-fermented dough: 3.6g yeast, 3.6g salt, 180g strong white flour, 126g water - 6 hours or so (it went a bit faster)

Final dough: 10g fresh yeast, 750 strong flour, 200 buckwheat flour, 50 rye flour, 300g (all) pre-ferment, 15g sel gris, 700 water - total 2038g at 70%

Ingredients - Pugliese

200g starter, 720 water, 590 strong flour, 160 "00" flour, 250 durum flour, 20 salt - total 1940 at 75%

I thought originally the breton bread would be fairly quick, but the pugliese also went really fast - so I nearly ran out of proofing baskets!  As it was, I ended up doing 3 Breton and 2 Pugliese - both the Pugliese in the La Cloche, two of the Bretons on a stone with metal lid and the other in La Cloche

The Breton didn't rise as much as I'd hoped, even in the La Cloche - but I guess there's quite a lot of buckwheat in there!  I did bake it when I thought it was just about ready - so a bit quicker than planned...  Quite a thick crust (this one was under the metal lid), pleasant taste, went well with eggs this morning...

Not sliced the Pugliese as both are going down to the dinner, but it rose beautifully (as usual) and I hope will taste good

Challenges of timing - the Pugliese went a LOT faster than I expected - so rather than my usual proof overnight in the fridge, I baked them all the same day.  Luckily I have two ovens, so one had the stone and the other the Cloche!

Will see what the reaction is tonight
cheers
S

Hello, I generally make a spelt sourdough with sprouted rye grains (crushed but not milled). But for a change, I was thinking of making something along the lines of barley and buckwheat with spelt but not sure where to start with proportions etc.

Would you suggest using barley and buckwheat flour (the problem with that is sourcing fresh flour)? or soaking/sprouting the grains and crushing them?? I don't have a grain/flour mill, but I can use my coldpress juicer to crush them into a paste like I normally do with the rye grain.

Has anyone made/tried a loaf like this and how did it turn out?

Any other hints or tips welcome.

Thanks Heaps!

After spending a weekend at my sister's beautiful house up North, I came home with these:

Beechnuts! As a kid I would spend half the autumn crawling around the base of the beech tree behind our school, looking for beechnuts, peeling them on the spot and eating them raw. Quite disgusting actually. Later on in life it became apparent that it wasn't all that healthy either; there is a minute dose of cyanide present in the raw nut. I never suffered any ill effects, and no one ever did probably, because to get really ill you'd need to eat quite a lot of them.

The beauty of it all is that when dried and roasted, all those bad elements evaporate. This afternoon I roasted the batch of nuts that I collected, and was instantly taken back to my childhood.

I told my better half about the "Fabeltjeskrant" children show I grew up on, here in the Netherlands. That was my first encounter with beechnuts, and most likely the reason why, for a number of autumns we would be collecting them whenever we could. Beechnuts were sort of a running gag in this puppet show, set in a forest, with a wide variety of animals that all seemed to love "beukennootjes" (e.g. beechnuts) They ate beechnut cakes, -pies, drank beechnut drinks, I think they even paid each other in "beukennootjes"

Putting two and two together, I decided to google for breads made with these forgotten tiny nuts. It came back with almost zilch (there was one "recipe" that classified itself as "total fail", so I didn't pursue that one...). Slightly puzzled I went to the TFL search bar... surely here I would find...something? Nope, nada, nothing! So, I went where no one went before, or so it seems... Since I didn't have a whole lot of beechnuts, I toasted them, and used them as soon as I could in the final dough. They were wonderfully fragrant. I decided to mix the nuts into a buckwheat bâtard (with buckwheat levain).

The levain was a little sluggish, for my schedule forced me to retard it, and it wasn't really back on track when my "baking window" came up, but nevertheless, they turned out quite nice. The outside is hardly spectacular, nor is the crumb, but the taste combination of buckwheat and beechnut is enchanting! The "blander" nuttiness of the buckwheat formed a perfect stage for the very specific beechnut to shine. Even with only two hands full they came through in all their glory.

My sister has received strict orders to save as many beechnuts as she can; I want to make this bread better than it is. I hope you want to help me get it really right! The taste is there, but I think the bread itself... I don't know, yet...it's just not right yet.

Freerk

As many of you know, one of the high points of my week is baking with my Down syndrome daughter, Becky.  She's absolutely taken to baking like a fish to water and is my indispensable right hand gal. 

So here's what we made.

Yesterday (8/20/11), we baked her sandwich loaves -- 30% buckwheat in an enriched sandwich bread matrix. We love the flavor of buckwheat and try to use it whenever we can in breads, pancakes, waffles, etc.

Later on, for dinner, we had two pizzas, the first a routine pepperoni, and the second one was this beauty -- caramelized onions, mozzarella, fresh black mission figs from our tree, and this amazingly tangy Bulgarian feta cheese we got from our local Middle Eastern market.  The flour was the imported Pivetti 00 pizzeria flour, of course.

And then this morning, to go with the cream cheese, smoked salmon and whitefish salad, we made these New York Egg Bagels (recipe from Inside the Jewish Bakery):

All in all, a nice productive weekend.

Stan Ginsberg
www.nybakers.com

I got a bag full of baking books in the mail. This is my first encounter with Daniel Leader's "Paline". I didn't put the linseeds in the dough, only on top.

greetz from amsterdam

Freerk

It seems as if there is no end to the riches of this website. I'm learning things about German breads that will keep me busy for years. Who knew?

Still looking to use up the buckwheat flour I've had around for a while, Karin's loaf looked and sounded awfully good. I made a couple of changes to suit my taste and method, but this is Karin's bread and it is one of the tastiest I've ever baked. The buckwheat and rye, balanced with a little sweetness and spice, is just unbeatable. Recipients gobbled it up right in front of me, not even waiting to take it home.

I eliminated the yeast, only because I am stubborn. To compensate, I increased fermentation and proofing times a little. I used dark rye flour because that's what I had. I used barley malt syrup instead of honey because I'm not crazy for honey in my bread. I cut the anise down to a smidgen, added some ground fennel along with the cardamom. This spice mixture stays nicely in the background, where it is a real contributor without being distinguishable on its own.

I baked it as one loaf about a kilo pre baked weight, with every kind of steam I could think of. It took 35 minutes to finish after 15 minutes of steam.

Not just a keeper, but one to work into the more regular rotation. Thanks, Karin, for the beautiful example, the inspiration, and the lesson.

Dark Buckwheat Rye

During my pregnancy with my son Per, I was very health conscious, studying all kinds of parenting books and magazines on how to provide my firstborn with an optimum of nutrition. As a result I ate buckwheat "porridge" for breakfast every day, for buckwheat is not only high in minerals, like iron and potassium, and full of antioxidants, it's also a good source of protein, and, not only that, it has more Vitamin B than wheat!

It took me a while to get used to its strong and distinctive taste, but after a while I found that I liked my buckwheat cereal, especially since I "softened" it with generous amounts of cream and honey. Seeing buckwheat flour in the supermarket, I remembered my positive experience, and thought that buckwheat might add an interesting flavor to bread. Leafing through my German bread baking books I found a recipe for buckwheat bread, and started experimenting with it.

I tried it with biga, than with sourdough, but the result was never really satisfying. Something was missing, the taste not balanced, "too healthy", or downright sour (with the starter), so I put the recipe away, to work on it another time.

But buckwheat grows right here in Maine, and when I tasted my first Ployes (French Acadian buckwheat pancakes) at the American Folk Festival in Bangor, I decided to revive my quest for a good buckwheat bread.

And this time, adding some spices and a little bit of honey, my buckwheat bread turned out as tasty as I had hoped. "Buckwheat Rye" can be made with white buckwheat flour (Ployes), whole buckwheat, or a combination of both, depending on your preference for a milder or more assertive buckwheat taste.

Light Buckwheat Rye - with 100% light buckwheat flour (ployes) - the other end of the spectrum.

2/3 Light Buckwheat Rye (2/3 light buckwheat + 1/3 dark buckwheat flour)

Medium Buckwheat Rye (half light/half dark buckwheat flour). Only the slashes show a different color from the 2/3 light buckwheat.

Light Buckwheat Rye, made with all light buckwheat flour (Ployes) is much airier than the darker breads.

2/3 Light Buckwheat Rye has still a rather open crumb.

Medium Buckwheat Rye Crumb (1/2 dark and 1/2 white buckwheat flour) looks nearly as dark as Dark Buckwheat Rye.

Dark Buckwheat Rye crumb.

The problem with buying specialty flours from the bulk food section is distinquishing the bags from another in my pantry. Those little scribbles on the twist ties don't really help.  Anyway, on Sunday I thought I'd make a rye using my rye sourdough starter. It wasn't until the flour hit the water that I began to notice the greyish color. Ah, this is that buckwheat I bought.

I've never cooked with buckwheat before. The first bread shown is a buckwheat sourdough--it's quite dark, partly because of the grain and mostly because I let it go too long. Nevertheless it was a delicious bread...a perfect complement to the mushroom soup I'd made. (sorry, I didn't use a recipe or weigh my ingredients on this loaf).

Buckwheat bread with rye starter (any my curious cat Bailey):

Then Wednesday, when I reached for my sourdough starter that I had fed on Sunday, I realized that I had accidentally fed it with buckwheat nstead of the rye flour I intended.. It had a sour grassy smell and I was afraid I'd ruined a very good starter. But I decided to use the bulk of it, 300 grams, in a rye bread. I was very happy with it. It has a complex and pleasing flavor, but the buckwheat and white flours toned down the rye.

Rye bread with buckwheat starter:

Hey All,

Just wanted to share with my my bake from last night.  Pain au Sarrasin, or Buckwheat Bread.  I think they turned out pretty nice.  I'll use slightly less salt next time, but I'm pretty happy with the result.  Enjoy!

Tim

Ingredients:

600g - AP

250g - BF

100g - Organic Buckwheat Groats (freshly milled)

50g - Organic Rye Berries (freshly milled)

150g - Stiff Sourdough Starter (60% hydration from fridge)

630g - Water

22g - Kosher Salt (will use 20g (2%) next time for 1000g of total flour)

1/2 tsp - Active Dry Yeast

1804g - Total Dough Yield

Instructions:
6:50pm - Measure out all ingredients, grind buckwheat and rye berries.

6:55pm - Mix all ingredients in large mixing bowl with wooden spoon.  When combined into rough dough, knead by hand and plastic scraper until combined.  Do not add any extra flour when kneading.  if sticking to hands, wet hands with some water.  Cover and let rest for 30 mins.

7:25pm - Knead 2 minutes by hand, rest, covered.

8:30pm - Turn dough, cover, let rest.

9:30pm - Divide into 4 equal pieces, preshape, cover and let rest.

9:45pm - Final shape into batards, place on couche seam side up, proof.  Place 2 baking stones in oven on 2 levels along with steam pan, preheat to 550F with convection.

10:45pm - Place 1/2 cup of water into steam pan.  Turn loaves out onto peel, slash, place in oven directly on stone.  When last loaf is in, place an additional cup of water into steam pan, close door, turn down to 460F no convection, bake for 15 minutes.  Rotate, turn down to 430F, bake for another 15 minutes.  Loaves are done when the internal temp reaches 210F.  Cool completely before cutting and eating.

 Submitted to Yeastspotting on 3/23/10.

Looking for somewhere i can get some alternatives to wheat flours such as the above for making bread with. I used to go to a lady in the south melbourne market but she seems not to be stocking much now.  I'm in East brunswick.  One ( very old) thread had something about one of the deli stores at the queen vic market having some - if anyone knows if this is still true I'd appreciate it