Milling

Lately I have been baking with flour home-milled from hard red winter wheat from Upinngil Farm in Gill Massachusetts.     I have also been experimenting with sifting the milled flour to achieve different results, and after reading about bolting - see Andy's post and note below - with bolting as well.   My first attempt at bolting using a knee-high nylon didn't go well.   The less said the better.    Then I realized that cheese cloth has a fine mesh and might possibly be well suited for the task at hand.    So I have been playing around with using cheese cloth to bolt fresh milled flour, without much good baking results.   

Today, I came back to it and made another attempt.    I decided to use my regular white starter, rather than working with a whole wheat starter, which adds another layer of complexity.   And also constrained the process by determining that I would only use the Upinngil whole wheat for the final dough.   

I proceeded as follows:  

1.  Mill 514 g of wheat berries at medium setting

2.  Sift with #24 wire strainer

3.  Mill what is caught in the sieve at fine setting

4.  Sift with #30 wire strainer

This process removed 50g of bran.

5.   Place flour on top of a square of cheese cloth and form a bag by folding up corners and securing with a twist tie

6.  Shake, bounce, bump, etc. into a wooden bowl.    (Note this step takes awhile.)

At the end of this process I had 226g of golden flour with only tiny flecks of bran in it, and left in the cheese cloth was 226g of a coarse flour / semolina mix.  

I decided to make two loaves - one with the more refined flour, and one with the less refined flour.  They both came out quite breadlike.

The one with the refined flour was a bit better behaved than the other.

I would say both tasted good with the second loaf with a much more rustic, coarse crumb.

Here are the formulae:

I mixed the first dough for 10 minutes, and the second for 20.    It was necessary to add a bit of medium rye to the second dough to make it adhere.   I was very worried about over fermenting and proofing these loaves so I erred on the side of under-doing it.    I fermented the first loaf for 2 hours, and the second for 1.5 hours, both with two stretch and folds.   Then proofed each of them for only 45 minutes.   They were baked together at 450F with steam for 20 minutes, and without for 25.  

Note:   Bolting is an old (say 17th century) method of refining flour by passing milled wheat through successively finer and finer cloth mesh tubes.   See for instance http://www.angelfire.com/journal/millbuilder/boulting.html%C2%A0%C2%A0   So technically I have done a hybrid of metal sifting and cloth bolting, as I only have one cloth mesh size.  

[Addendum:  For those of you who think that milling, sifting, and now bolting is too messy, please note that only 13g of flour was missing in action.    I'm sure it will be all cleaned up in the fullness of time. ] 

What do you do with the fruits of a couple of less than successful attempts at a Dark 100% Rye bread?

Altus!

What is altus you ask?

Old bread …namely, ground up leftover rye bread usually soaked in water.

In my case its old (ugly) dark sour 100% rye bread that is soaked overnight in water. I also crumbled dry altus and fed my rye starter portions of this along with normal rye flour.

Old bread, blended, coffee and soaker

I baked three different breads this weekend, all of them utilising altus. First was the “any grain” sourdough, this time in tins, another dark sour rye and the country bread with two starters.

The night before I prepared soakers, starters, milled and sifted the necessary flours so as to make the morning as peaceful and smooth as possible.

Any Grain Sourdough in tins (grains included in total flour)

Formula

Method

1. Autolyse bakers flour and water for 30min, then stir with wooden spoon for 5 minutes.
2. Add the rest of the ingredients and mix 5-10mins. I use a scraper in my right hand to pick up and turn the dough and keep my left hand wet enough to avoid excessive sticking.
3. Allow bulk ferment for 15-30mins.
4. Shape and roll in rolled oats. Place into greased tins (mine were Pullman) seam side down.
5. I proved these for one hour and 45 minutes before placing into oven with lids on for 15 minutes at 270°C  then a further hour at 200°C

Country bread with two starters

I deviated from the procedure described in a previous posting on these breads in two ways.

The rye starter build was a fed a portion of altus crumbs and the final dough had a 200g altus soaker consisting of equal weights of water and dark rye bread.

The altus soaker was blended with water before adding the flours for the autolyse.

I have again tried my hand at a 100% Sour Dark Rye. I had to alter several things for this bake. I am out of rye grains for milling so for this bake I used Four Leaf Millings biodynamic rye meal flour. I also used the altus as a soaker instead of cracked grains.

Dark Rye Bread Ver 3

Formula

Method

1. Soaker is blended with warm water before the rest of the ingredients are added.
2. Mix until well combined.
3. With wet hands shape and place into greased pullman tin.
4. After my previous cases of overproving I watched the dough like a hawk and it seemed ready after one hour. I docked and placed into a 270°C oven for 15 minutes then a further two hours at 200°C.

__

The altus gave the breads a serious flavour kick and moistness to the crumb. The country bread’s crumb was significantly darker from last weeks bake due to the added altus and it was a delight to see the dark flecks of past rye failures given a new life.

… and again I wait with trepidation for the opportunity to cut the dark rye and peer inside…

cheers, Phil

p.s. A little side story ... My partner managed to create her own version of altus unbeknownst to her when she put a rye crust wrapped in a tea towel through the washing machine. Lets just say with toilet training children in the house a rye crust wasn't the first thing that came to mind when she saw the brown lump amongst the towels.