multigrain

So today i started a double batch variant of a multigrain hearth bread in the PR delayed fermentation/epoxy style. I decided to add 12ozs of cooked brown rice, quinoa, and amaranth grains for extra protein; i've also found that the quinoa sometimes gives a pleasant little *pop* if you happen to catch a grain between your teeth while eating the bread. It's "retarding" now; meaning I got lazy, and didn't want to bake it tonight so i left the bowl in the cold basement to do its thing.

I baked them in the early afternoon. By the time I actually got to them with a camera, they looked like this:

The crust was nice, but the crumb wasn't as open as i would have liked. I had a little trouble transfering it to the oven stone, and that negated a lot of the proofing : \ However, it wasn't dense in that heavy, difficult-to-chew-through way. Rather, every bite was substantial, chewy, and pleasant. I've become a great fan of naturally leavened breads, in part because of that unique texture.

I made this one the next day, somewhat on a whim, only checking Hammelman's sourdough seed bread recipe for a guide of what proportion of seeds to put in.

This one turned out amazingly, slightly burnt crust aside. The inside opened up nicely and the toasted seeds added a nutty sweetness that shut out any need for sweetener.

I also think I should get my camera out sooner, maybe I'll get a photo of a whole loaf one day... 

Sourdough Sunflower Seed Bread with Sprouted Grains

2lbs high extraction flour (e.g. Heartland Mill Golden Buffalo)

~20-22ozs water

~.6-.7 oz salt

5.5 oz sunflower seeds, toasted in pan and cooled

4oz sprouted grains (i used a combination of quinoa and amaranth. The grains should be soft from all the soaking, so no grinding was needed)

Sourdough culture (unknown amount, ~ 3 heaping tablespoons. ish.)

1) Mix Flour, water, grains, and salt into a tacky dough and let rest for 30-60 minutes for autolyse.

2) Cut dough and sourdough into small/medium chunks and mix. Knead until well blended and dough feels strong, ~7-10 minutes. (I knead by hand).

3) Let ferment for about 2.5-3hrs, folding at 1-1.5 hour intervals, depending on dough strength.

4) Unload dough, shape, and let proof for ~1hr, while heating oven + stone at 400-425.

5) Top with more sunflower seeds, slash, and bake with steam, turning down oven to 375 or so if crust darkens too quickly.

6) Eat when patience fails.

I just pulled my Quinoa Struan out of the oven a little while ago, and I'm rather pleased with the results.

I used reinhart's multigrain struan formula and used 6ozs of cooked quinoa in the overnight soaker. I also used Heartland Mill Golden Buffalo flour, which I'm playing aroudn with. I've used "Gold 'n' White" flour before (a high-extraction flour, meaning the coarse bran sifted out of whole wheat flour), and I was pleased with it, so I ordered 25 lbs of this to see how it performed. So far so good i think. Since it called for a substantial amount of yeast to be added for the final proof, I think it rose rather quickly, and was probably ready before I made it back home. I had to reform it and considered letting it proof a second time, but I thought it might become a mess if the yeasts were given too much free reign.

I haven't tasted this loaf yet (it wasn't done cooling), but it smells great. It looks like it would be great for sandwiches or toast. I was intrigued when it called for milk in the soaker, and I wonder how that will impact the bread.

I have done a lot of scattered baking the past two months. These are pics of most of it. OK, so only one loaf was actually bad. That was the one where I thought I forgot to add the salt to the evening mix, so I added it the next morning. That was one of Peter Reinhart’s epoxy sandwich loaves. Not only was it too salty, but as you can guess it also didn’t rise very well. It still had a very nicely textured crumb. That loaf went in the freezer for use as breadcrumbs. I just hope I remembered to label it!

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07/29/07 This was a wonderfully flavorful multigrain loaf, based on the NYT/Lahey No Knead Bread. Thanks Cooky for the grains combination! I couldn’t find my cornmeal, so used corn grits instead. I didn’t presoak any of the grains, but with the 18 hour ferment they did fine. I didn’t get well-developed gluten, but for the minimum effort involved, I was happy, and the taste was great.

A few days later, I diced up the remainder and used it for a cheesy bread pudding. Topped with the bacon/tomato/onion flavors of bluezebra’s mulligan stew it made a very nice light supper.

1/3 cup rye flour

1/3 cup steel cut oats

1/3 cup cornmeal

1/2 cup WW flour

1-1/2 cup bread flour

1 Tbsp gluten

1.5 tsp table salt (or 2 tsp kosher salt)

1/4 tsp yeast

1.5 cups water (more?)

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09/27/07 This is the cinnamon oatmeal raisin bread that so many of us know and love. I could have done a better job of mixing the raisins in, but am otherwise very happy with it. I’ll be making this often, freezing it in half-loaf portions. Eventually I hope to have large volume formulas I’m happy with for other breads, so I can keep the freezer stocked with a variety of breads. Yes, three loaves is large volume for me! The Delonghi/Kenwood mixer handled the full recipe just fine.

I subbed in 214 gr sourdough starter for corresponding amounts of flour and water, and added 1 Tbsp. granular lecithin to the dough. Both of these were to enhance the keeping quality. I also took the dough for the third loaf, and made cinnamon rolls from it. They were baked with more butter, sugar and cinnamon, and topped with icing. But I thought the plain bread was better.

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09/15/07 The loaf on the left is Peter Reinhart’s transitional rye sandwich loaf on page 119. I did increase the content of whole wheat flour relative to bread flour just a bit. The loaf on the right is a quickly thrown together NYT/Lahey no-knead rye bread. I wanted to try the King Arthur deli rye flavor, but didn’t want to adulterate the taste of the rye sandwich loaf. I don’t think I quite got the perfect formula for the no-knead! But it was still a good bread.

The taste comparison was interesting. A few hours after the bread was baked, we thought the PR loaf was a bit sweet, and preferred the flavor of the other one. The next day, we noticed more complex flavors in the PR loaf, and preferred it. Next time I may try the PR loaf with the King Arthur flavor enhancer.

The flat no knead rye made a nice hearty sandwich

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08/11/07 I played around a lot with the NYT/Lahey no knead. This one has kalamata olives, parmesan and marjoram. Unfortunately, there was no rosemary in the house. The bread was still good, and eaten with an Italian chicken dish. I also love it for tunafish sandwiches.

The bread additions were decided on rather late in the process, so I spread out the dough, topped with the additions, and rolled it up. I then did a few folds. This was NOT a good way to get the olives evenly distributed!

The result was a dough that wasn’t developed quite enough. As you can see, it has a lot of puff at the top.

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09/??/07 One of my uses for some leftover starter was some sourdough biscuits. I didn’t get the formula right – and my starter was probably too old to use.

So they weren’t perfect biscuits, but were definitely tasty!

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09/08/07 I think this is the Loaf for Learning from Laurel’s Kitchen. It was a good effort, with a nice soft crumb but my version still has room for improvement. Definitely worth a 2nd try.

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08/20/07 This is the sandwich loaf from Reinhart’s new book, Whole Grain Breads. Too bad about that salt!

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08/09/07 This is my earlier attempt at almost the same loaf. This time I had used JMonkey’s version.

I will try this one more time. Sure hope the third time’s the charm!

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08/30/07 I took a basic NYT/Lahey no-knead, gave it a few extra folds, and tried a sandwich-loaf shape. It didn’t have quite enough structure. You can see it pushed out the rolling pins I used to hold my “couche” in place.

It still made a very tasty loaf, and was good for sandwiches. You can see how it laughed at my slashes! More than likely I won't try this formula like this again - either go with the utter simplicity of the original, or make a bread designed to hold up to shaping. But I had fun finding out if it would work.

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08/06/07 This is about a half recipe of the NYT/Lahey loaf, small enough to fit easily in my toaster oven.

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08/04/07 This is my first whole wheat sourdough. I started following instructions for a mixer far less powerful than mine, and way overkneaded the dough.

I thought I had great ovenspring, but just had these huge baker’s caves (Surely some bakers lived in caves sometime.) Anyway, you’ll find a discussion of much that went wrong HERE.

400 g starter (about 100% - mostly WW with some rye & AP)

480 g WW flour

420 g water

1.25 teaspoons table salt

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Well, that’s all the pics. We also had pizza a few times, but I always forgot to snap a photo. Some of the breads were also consumed without benefit of camera. ;~) Extra starter went into cornbread and a few batches of waffles. The cornbread tasted about the same as normal. I don’t know how the waffles compared, because I hadn’t made them in years! The desire to use extra starter triggered all sorts of things. I may do pancakes next weekend.

I’ve had a very chaotic summer, and baked way more than we need to eat. Yes, we gave some away, but also ate too much. Time for me to get back to doing some things I’ve been ignoring and bake a little less. Both my office and my waistline will appreciate it!

It is a sad truth that supporting oneself can seriously compete for the time we want to spend on the really good stuff. Last week I squoze in some shopping between business errands. That trip to the bulk bins let me get some rice flour to help cotton release dough during proofing and barley to attempt home made malt. Although I am a child of the sixties, I never could get grains to sprout uniformly and this test was more of the same. Some grains go ahead and sprout and others just go to funk.

As unsuccessful as the malt test was, the rice flour test was super-successful. That flour is like a zillion little ball bearings that will send things zipping around the counter and floor with just a tap. A tub of fermenting dough hit the floor and when the bread baker's canine apprentice came running, her hind overtook her frenzied fore in a clatter of claws. She's not the kind of dog to feel embarrassment at indignity, just some disappointment that I was quicker to recover than she was!

Got Bread?

But back to the rice flour; no dough sticking to the cotton towel at all. Rice flour does stick to the top of your loaf giving it a grainy texture. I'm wondering if the linen or synthetic proofing cloth are nonstick all on their own or do they need less flouring?

The goal for my weekend bread baking was to use notes from Susan's Sourdough Under Glass and my newly purchased pizza stone for some small boules and also create a multigrain 4# Sourdough ala Mountaindog. I don't have a big pyrex bowl but I have very large stainless bowls that my girls used for sledding when they were small. I believe they are 13 quart and they perfectly cover a large pizza stone. Too bad, I didn't get to view the oven-spring!

Small Sourdough Boules

WW Sourdough 4#er

WW Sourdough Crumb

3 7/8# Sourdough Loaf

I spent about 20 hours on a slow fermentation, leaving the dough refrigerated overnight and at a cool room temperature for an additional 8 hours the next day. The basic formula is Thom Leonard's Country French increasing the proportions of rye and whole wheat flours to taste. I use Pendleton Mills flour and used a 12% protein pizza blend white for this loaf.

This was a fun process and I'm getting no complaints from the test consumer group!