Seeds everywhere!  Lots of seeds!  Seeds in the dough seeds around the dough.  Seeds, seeds, seeds!  A few nuts too and my favorite flours, Rye and Spelt.   Lots of fibre! 

DOUGH    in order:

• 170g rye sourdough starter 100% hydration
• 600g water at about 20°C  (68°F)    Stir until starter is well dispersed
• 70g dried walnut rye sourdough altus crumbs
• 5g bread spices (blend of crushed coriander, caraway, fennel)
• 100g spelt flour
• 600g rye flour

       Mix until all flour is wet, cover and set aside for about 2 hours.  Then add:

• 13.5g salt
• 70g hemp seeds
• 8g roasted sesame seeds (1 tbs)
• good handful sunflower seeds
• a good handful of crushed poppy seeds 

Work everything in well and let it rest covered 2 hours (22°C)

Here is where things got hung up... getting ready to shape the loaf... didn't like the last loaf shape in the last bake...  Had a couple of hours to think this out so I started debating with myself what other seeds variations I wanted in the loaf, what shape or form to use, banneton or no banneton, clay baker or free form.  I wanted seeds on the outside, liked the way chia seeds made a sort of support on the outside crust and then again, I wanted something interesting going on too.   Ready for a change...  approx. 1650g of dough or too much for a 9x5x4 bread tin.

Staring at a fresh bag of crushed flax and having just had potato flakes on my mind, what if?  What if I rolled the dough in mixed seeds?  What if I rolled them in seeds and piled them up inside my woks to bake?  Would the dough support itself better as smaller dough pieces?  Or would it go flat?  It likes to go flat.  Unmixed seeds?  Testing seed covers?  Little blobs of dough in different colors piled up on each other?  This was beginning to sound like a "monkey bread."  Then I could see rolling balls of rye dough (or dropping globs of wet cement) falling into bowls of various seeds, rolling around and stacking themselves up to make a loaf.  Might prove interesting...  or one big mess.   Will the bread balls separate or allow for slicing?  Mmmm.

Unlike the overly sweet sticky monkey bread, this is the savory version:  Seedy Nutty Monkey Rye

It is actually quite easy with two large wet soup spoons!  Once covered, the dough balls are easy to place and move around.

Drop large spoonfuls of dough (about the size of an egg) into soup bowls with about 1cm deep

• crushed poppy seed (dark gray/black)
• crushed flax seed (brown with shiny specks)
• whole green pumpkin seeds (they turn a beautiful chestnut brown)
• chia seeds (light gray)
• potato flakes (turn dull brown) 

Arrange into a buttered bundt pan (or a pullman pan) cover and allow to rise 3-4 hours. 

I actually used a poke test!  Amazing!  I first steamed the bundt pan inside two woks, one inverted over the other.

Preheat the oven with one wok (2 cm of water inside) to 225°C using the fan setting. 

Place the filled bundt pan inside, cover and steam bake 30 minutes, then remove from oven, quickly take out bundt pan with loaf returning it to the oven to brown and finish baking at 200°C using upper & lower heat setting.  Done when inside loaf temp reaches 96°C and it has rich brown color.   Place rack onto bread and invert.  Remove pan and allow to cool.  Bag overnight.  Cut the next day.

I don't know which side of the loaf should be up, the top or the bottom.  I started out calling it monkey bread.  When it landed on its rack it had mutated into turtle shell bread.

And now for the crumb shots.   An interesting thing happened and it shouldn't be of any surprise... but the coatings that absorb the most amount of water, tend to create the separating problems in the crumb.  The oil containing seeds seem to let the rye dough pass around them to join with neighboring dough balls.  Potato flakes and chia seeds seemed to create natural seams  .  This might be corrected if sprayed with water while arranging.  I could still cut off 1cm slices nicely but to cut .5cm  led some sections to separate. 

The bread tastes like a vollkorn should (yum!) and has an enjoyable bite and flavor that lingers.  We've been eating from it and have not yet spread anything on it.  It is not dry.  Still waiting on the sunshine but as the snow is beginning to fall again...  I'll post what I have.  I used a sharp knife to first cut the loaf in half and then the electric slicer.  Chia was a knife deterrent with its thin tight shell on the crust.

Not too patch work like inside.  Some interesting lines between the sections that run together.  Crumb looks very consistant.

This was originally posted on my blog Healthy living, you can see more images there but here is the run down of my day baking.

Bake n Blog February 9 2010 finish
As my bake day came to the close it was more of a disappointment than success this time. There were happy moments that shun through on small occasions but over all it was a bust. My spelt sourdough that I like to make did not turn out, the substitution of white flour with wheat made the dough wet and hard to work with, and when I free formed the bread it decided to run all over and became more of a large flat bread. The only good part of this bread story is that I got a proof cabinet and made wooden shelf for the proffer so non of my bread stuck to the shelves. When the bread baked the flavor was more sour than I would like, reading few blogs about baking I learned that the small amount of salt does not add much to the flavor so this time I skipped the salt on my breads, big no no, the small pinch of salt that we add to the dough actually makes a big difference in taste. The Pain au Levain turned out great except that I also held the salt back so it's not as flavorful but over all it is a good bread.

To Success.

This bake I decided to try and convert my beer pizza dough from using dry yeast to sourdough and it was a success. I hope to share about this in my next blog, I baked 4 pizzas including 1 with bananas and cinnamon, and we loved it.

Things I learned from the bake.

One main thing I have learned from this bake is that when you are trying a new bread or a changing your current recipe, do it to a single loaf of bread, not your whole mix.

Stick to what works, and what you know that you will like.

Use salt, although it's a small amount but does enhance the flavor tremendously.

Most of all don't get disappointed, you can always try again.

Till our next bake.

This was first posted on my blog Healthy Living @ http://www.ourwholesomehomes.com

Not to long ago Grand Central Bakery in Portland OR sold raisin panini, but according to my brother in law who drove out to the bakery regularly just to pick them up, they stopped making them, so with that said I decided to create my own version of panini. In the process of my last bake I took 2 kg of the dough that was made for bread and convert it to panini dough. Since I was going for a healthier version of panini I used spelt based sourdough.

Dough recipe.

400 gr 150% hydration rye starter.
800 gr Organic whole Spelt flour.
200 gr Organic dark rye flour.
600 gr Organic white flour.
30 gr Salt.
2 handful of raisins (reason I don't measure these is that you can never have to much raisins and same goes for walnut).
1 handful of walnut.

Soak your raisins in water for about an hour, then pat them dry with a paper towel, the reason for doing this is that they will have lots of water and it will make your dough to moist.

Mix your starter with water, add flour and salt mix, for 3 minutes.

Rest the dough for about 20 minutes in a bowl.

Knead for 5 minutes.

Rest again for 30 minutes.

Take your dough and dump it on a counter add your raisins and walnut to it and knead for about 10 minutes you will have to adjust the dough by adding more flour to it, the best way to do this is by taking your hands and sticking them in to the flour and mixing the dough, this way the flour will be absorbed evenly, you might have to repeat this for few times until your dough is nice and elastic.

Place the dough back into the bowl, cover it with a tea towel and let it rise for 4 to 6 hours or until almost double.

Divide the dough into small rolls, just smaller than tennis ball size and let it proof for 1 to 2 hours. The best way to check if it's ready is if you use a finger press test.

Place in your wood fired oven, spray some water above it to create steam, close the door and let them bake for about 15 minutes. Don't forget that they are smaller and will bake faster than your bread so check on them after 10 or so minutes.

Let them cool and enjoy as a healthy desert, they are perfect with some cream cheese or some jam.

You can see more images on my blog.

Yesterdays recap.

11 hours since I started my bake n blog day, I finally completed my bake. At first the dough was giving me some trouble, by being stubborn and not wanting to double fast enough, luckily my wife came up with a great solution, I took it into our baby room where we keep it warmer, and with in two hours it popped wright up.

I divided the dough into 1.5lb loaves and let it rise free formed on my granite counter. Last week I tried using tea towel but all my loaves got stuck to it and the bread fell flat as I was removing it from them. All together I had 16 loaves of bread and 20 paninis. As with my previous bake I still had trouble mastering the slashing, I will need to practice more with that.

One of the accomplishments is that I was able to place the bread in the wood fired oven in such a way that I baked all of them in just to bakes, so that is great, It means that I can bake more bread with out having to fire the oven again.

On the Pain au Levain I added extra steam to the oven about 7 minutes after placing the bread in, that resulted in a much crustier crust which I liked.

The spelt bread is the best variation that I have tried so far, it's definitely going to be one of the breads that I will bake regularly. One of the main thing I learned in this bake is to just relax during the whole process and don't try to rush things, sometimes the little beasts in the starter like to work on there own schedule and we just cant do much about it. It was lots of fun and I know that my family and many of my friends will enjoy the bread for the week to come.

Please visit my site to see more pictures from the bake.

Healthy living.

I'm a long time lurker and first time poster.

Last week I finally got a decent sourdough starter going, based on the instructions in Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads. I used it successfully to make Pierre Nury’s Rustic Light Rye and some Sourdough Waffles, both of which came out well with the clear instructions provided. I decided to try making some 100% whole grain bread, which I've never had much success with, and finally settled on jmonkey's recipe.

I used the stretch and fold technique for kneading, shaped it into a boule, and baked it in a 450ºF oven on a stone. Also, since I can only get soft whole wheat here, I added vital wheat gluten to the flour to compensate (around 2-3 tsp/cup).

It might be too caramelized for some tastes, but I liked the way it came out (thanks jmonkey!). I expected the crumb to be more open based on what the recipe said, but I think I may have underproofed the loaf a bit. Next time I will also put the stone lower in the over since the bottom took much too long to finish. As far as taste goes, it was delicious, one of the best whole grain breads I've had. What do you think?

Chris