I milled a couple of pounds of soft wheat into pastry flour today to bake these scones.  This is my first try at these using home-milled flour.  I think they came out quite nice.  (My apologies for the poor pictures.  My wife is the pro photographer, but she's asleep!)

and

I used the recipe from Crust and Crumb by Peter Reinhart, and just like everyone else that bakes this recipe, I always have to add nearly twice the liquid to get the dough workable.  It was no different this time with home-milled flour than it has been in the past with AP flour.  I think the taste is richer though with the fuller flavor of the home milled flour.  I made these with dehydrated blueberries, straight from the bag, but they came out nice and moist, albeit a bit chewey, without soaking or boiling them first. 

My wife requested the square shape instead of the traditional pie slices because they are easier to stack for freezing.  I'm baking most of these for a family gathering this coming weekend, and there will not be enough time later in the week to do much baking.  So a short freeze, then a warm up in a hot oven Sunday should make them (almost) good as new.

OldWoodenSpoon

Reinhart's Yeasted Rye was gummy

This weekend I decided to try Reinhart's Yeasted Rye, from Crust & Crumb p.104. I realize sourdough has its advantages when making rye, but the reason I went with the yeasted is that, sadly, my wife doesn't like even the mildest sourness of sourdough. I followed my notes (below in italics) based on that recipe closely. I had to use half high gluten, half medium gluten flour for the bread flour, and used half pumpernickel, half whole rye for the coarse rye. I also brushed the top with an egg white and milk mix, then sprinkled on colorful seeds.

Reinhart's Yeasted Rye: Combine sponge ingredients and ferment, covered, 4 hours, to rise & fall: 126g bread flour, 126g coarse rye flour, 1 tsp instant yeast, 1  c cool water;  After 4 hours, add to sponge: 252g bread flour, 1 TBSP brown sugar or diastatic malt powder (I used the latter), 1.25 tsp salt, ½ tsp IY, 1 TBSP caraway or other seeds, 1 tsp caramel coloring, instant coffee or cocoa powder, optional (I used 1/2 tsp cocoa powder), ¼ c buttermilk (4 TBSP). Mix on low in machine 1 min, then medium a scant 8 minutes; don't overmix. Should be smooth, stretchy, tacky, evenly incorporated. Should windowpane. Ferment covered until double. Shape (e.g. for bread pan), put in greased loaf pan, cover, proof until nearly double; bake in preheated 350°F (177°C) oven for pan bread, with steam, 45-55 min. until internal 195F. Cool on rack 90 mins.

Ok, on my first try I lowered the oven temp slightly (about 170C) in an attempt to get a softer bread, baked 55 mins, and tested to 195F internal so I figured it must be done. I brushed the top with milk to soften the crust, as it was to be sandwich bread. I noticed a slight collapsing of the top crust at that point. I let it cool in the loaf pan 15 mins then tried to turn it out onto a cooling rack, but it started sagging, collapsing slightly.  After 90 mins cooling, I cut a slice and found it was all gummy inside (inedibly so), despite having been very brown on the outside and having reached the requisite internal temp. I doubt I overmixed, as Reinhart calls for a scant 8 mins mixing, and I probably mixed 6 mins, stopping since it seemed smooth and springy and didn't tear when trying to get a windowpane of sorts.  So was this more likely to have been underdone, or to have been that starch attack thing?

I then made a 2nd (successful) attempt, but being more interested in getting a usable sandwich loaf for today's lunch than in doing a proper experiment where only one variable at a time is changed, I moved the rye flour from the sponge to the 2nd stage (and an equiv. amount of bread flour from 2nd stage to sponge), switched from diastatic malt powder to brown sugar, scalded the buttermilk, kept the temp at 177C (i/o 170C), tenting with foil after 15 mins, and baked to 203F internal  instead of 195 internal. I let it cool in the loaf pan half an hour before transferring it to the rack, and there was no sagging or collapsing. After 90 mins cooling, I sliced a piece. The result was a perfect loaf with a perfect crumb, nary a hint of gumminess, and a lovely, light caraway rye flavor.

Now, other than telling me to do sourdough (I understand that the higher acidity of sourdough will inhibit amylase activity in the sub-176F range), what advice do the rye bread gurus have for me? Which of the above bolded changes do you think was most likely responsible for the drastic improvement of the 2nd loaf?

Do you think it was the lower baking temp combined with a non-acidic dough giving more time in the starch-attack temp range which had caused the serious gumminess in loaf #1? Would the presence of diastase have exacerbated this? Would enzymes from unscalded homemade buttermilk exacerbate this? Or is is possible that the loaf was just underdone despite clearly reaching the specified internal temp and being nice and brown on the outside (well, the top)?

I've already succeeded in changing the recipe to produce a successful loaf, but I'd like your input on which change(s) probably helped the most. Thanks in advance! :)  

Since there's not a Philosophy of bread section, I guess this shoudl go here.

http://www.ted.com/talks/peter_reinhart_on_bread.html is a talk Peter Reinhart made a TED.  If you're not familiar with TED, you should be.  Go look and be amazed.

Mike

100 % sprouted grains? 'Sounds great and interesting', I said to myself and printed the Recipe of Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads a couple weeks ago. This weekend I gave it a try.

I sprouted my grains as indicated. They all had cute little white tails and were pleasant to chew. I would have better kept them as a addition to my breakfast cereals instead of trying to make them into a bread.

"grind the grains into a pulp as fine as possible. If the grains warm up to much, let them rest for ten minutes and continue when cooled. A meat grinder works even better" - That's what Reinhart wrote. I should have been an english native to know what exactly a food processor is. I tried everything, and everything failed.

my kenwood mixer . . .

the mixer which normally fixes everything, the legendary bamix . . . The bamix addon grinder . . .

even the kenwood grater . . .

and last but not least, in desperation, I tried it with a passevite.

I fought about an hour, ended up with my bamix. All the other things blocked because of this doughy/grainy mass. My bamix just got very hot, so I decided to call it for good, even though there were still some whole grains. I added yeast, honey, salt, water and Vital Wheat Gluten, then fermentation, shaping, proofing, baking, cooling, slicing.

The result of this struggle? My bamix is somewhat weird. The exchangeable blades are very hard to remove and to put on again. (I hope my mom won't find out.) I washed kitchen equipment for about an hour. And I've got a bread which is jar-muscle-excercise. It is light, but the grains . . . Flavorwise, it's just bread. seriously, I had much better whole grain breads. I don't notice an exciting difference trough the sprouting and because of the considerable amount of yeast added, no other interesting flavors emerged. Even my family noticed a "lack" in flavor compared to other breads I bake.

You wan't to see pictures?I know the bread looks decent, but before you try it: Think about what gear you've got.

Salome

I made the Reinhart 100% Whole Wheat Sandwich bread (the first one in the book, I'm pretty sure) and it came out flat like a Ciabatta.  I tried to make a Batard, per the instructions, and it just didn't come out.  The dough lacked the strength to hold its shape for very long so it flattened out while proofing.

I used a Kitchenaid dough hook to do the mixing.  I am thinking that the dough needed to be stretched and folded somewhere in the process, maybe, to build up strength in the dough.  Anyone had any experience with this and know where I might be going wrong?

I'll post a picture of the pancake tonight. :)

Hey all, I've been meandering through this site for the past few months and trying out the various recipes and techniques, and I have been really happy with the results.  This is one of the best sites I've ever come across, and I'm glad it's here.

So here's my question.  I've been experimenting with the formulas in Reinhart's Crust and Crumb with a fair amount of success, so far.  However, last night I made the poolish forumula, and it doesn't look so good.  I used the formula rather than the recipe, but ended up with roughly half the recipe (2c. flour, 2c. water or 300g flour 530g water - the formula says 178% water) I added about 1/8 tsp of yeast (too small for an accurate weight on my scale).  When I mixed it together it was very thin, like crepe batter.  I let it sit for about 5 hours, and when I checked it again, the flour had settled to the bottom and a layer of water had formed on top.  There were a few bubbles on the surface of the water and some holes in the flour underneath, but not the large foamy oles that I've seen in pictures.  I mixed it up once more to get the water back in with the flour and threw it in the fridge.  This morning it looks exactly the same as when I put it in the fridge last night only separated again.  There are no holes, no bubbles and it looks as if no fermentation is taking place at all. 

Did I do something wrong?  I really want to make Reinhart's sweet rustic bread; can I use a different poolish formula?

Please help.

Thanks,
Jeremy

I was given some great new Italian Sausage bu a new local vendor, so a great excuse to make Peter Reinhart's Casatiello fron the BBA book. Really a nice change. It was wonderful.

Here is some crumb detail

Related blog post here.

Hi all --

I just posted about making the first bread of the BBA Challenge, Reinhart's Anadama.

Check out photos and a recipe at Flour Girl. 

And feel free to join in on the challenge!

Happy baking!

Heather

While I said I was tired of rye, I still haven't done a true pumpernickel. My husband loves dark, bitter breads. It doesn't seem to get much darker or more bitter than this. I think I'm going to bake a light rye on the side so -I- have something to eat this week, too!

Has anyone used the recipe for this from Reinhart's "Whole Grain Breads" pg 224-227 (Hey, nothing intimidating about 3 pages of instructions, right!?).

I've converted a bit of my spelt starter over to a mostly-rye starter, and I've got a bit of my wholegrain sourdough that I made last week (The 'Dr. Evil Bread' as I called it) cubed up and soaking to make the altus for it. Heck, I even went out and bought a candy/deep fryer thermometer just for this after having my yogurt not quite cooperate last week for the sourdough English muffins (FWIW, you -can- do a second innoculation of yogurt that's in a yogurt maker if it isn't curdling properly!).

Reading the instructions 2-3 times is one thing. Having any commentary from someone who's actually made this would be invaluable. I still can't find truly coarse-grind (pumpernickel grind) flour anywhere, and I'm just not willing to buy it, so I've got some of Bob's Red Mill Dark Rye for this project. I'll be omitting the optional diastatic malt powder. I do have the rye berries - should I throw some into the food processor use that in the mash where it asks for "whole rye meal or rye flour" rather than sticking with just the dark rye?

Hello,

I am reading the excellent "Crust and Crumb" by Peter Reinhart" In the section on poolish, page 34, he says: "you can freeze unused poolish and save it for another time, if you do so just before or after refreigerating it on the first night"

I am surpised, I thought freezing killed yeast cells? Any thoughts on how this works, or how long you could get away with leaving it frozen and then using it?

Darell