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!

Hi, Fellow TFL'ers

I'am sure many of you have baked recipes from Peter Reinhart's Wholegrain breads. Yesterday, I mixed a soaker and a BIGA for a 100% Whole wheat sandwich bread. When i woke up 8 hours later, i found that the soaker has inflated the plastic wrap to a dome.. i.e. My BIGA was outside, and the soaker was in the fridge. The BIGA was overproofed, and smelled of alcohol... What to do? My baking instincs pushed me to deflate it, shape it to a ball again, and then, freeze it..?!

The Soaker is outside now, iam at work, and the BIGA is in the freezer?! should i worry? I have not been there before.. does anyone know how many hours i need to take the BIGA out of the freezer in order for its temp. to come back to room temp..?

I'd appreciate your help..

(Edit: The BIGA is yeasted .. not sourdough)

(Edit: Added Pics: I still don't get it.. why do my panned loaves always burst at the sides.? I have shaped tightly, grease the pan well, Proofed well, steamed well..)

Here the Crumb exposes the flaws caused by the overproofed BIGA: Crumbly Texture, yet soft.

The flavor was Good.. not the best... as the alcohol produced by the excessive yeast fermentation of BIGA left an off-taste to the loaf.

In conclusion, This loaf will prove itself useful to my digestive tract... though will not please my tongue, nor my eyes..

khalid

Hi everyone,

I regularly bake a whole grain sourdough (using cooked Kashi grains, cornmeal and 5-grain oatmeal), using Reinhart's WGB method (soak grains overnight along with prefermenting sourdough).  (It's basicaly his "transitional" whole grain loaf)

Today I baked four loaves, and was under some time constraints and my sourdough was not at its most vigorous, so I added yeast, too.  The flour is about 50/50 KA white whole wheat and KA white bread flour.  The loaves came up wonderfully!  But one much more so that the others (though they were treated identically up until they went into the oven).  Here's a side by side comparison:

As you can see, the one on the right opened much more, with a much better grigne.  I put the difference down to steam.  The explanation is the arrangement of my oven:

I have two large square pizza stones (From Bed Bath and Beyond--$16 each!) but I broke one in half to make a large baking surface on the top of the oven.  I use the other half for extra space next to the tray of lava stones I use for steaming.

When inserting loaves I put three loaves on the top and one next to the tray of lava stones.  That lower one obviously gets more steam; the more opened bread comes from there (moved to the top rack after 20 mins baking to crisp up the grigne).  It was very much softer on the top when I moved it.

There is a good 1 1/2 to 2 inch gap around the top stone on all sides, which should let enough steam up there.  (A gas will expand to fill the volume it's in.) My theory is that the oven vents the steam pretty well, so the steam doesn't stay around the loaves at the top of the oven.

My question is how to get more steam to the top loaves?

Blocking the steam vets is out of the question (I have seen reports here from folks who have fried their oven's electronics doing that).  

Would getting another oven tray for the top shelf of the oven and lining it with another stone better trap the steam in lower parts of the oven?  

Or perhaps I just need to pour on more water than the (guesstimate) 1 1/2 cups biking water I pour on the rocks.

Or perhaps move the whole arrangement closer to the top of the oven?

Any advice would be appreciated.  Thanks!  

Mason.

Firstly, I have a new song to kneed along to. The lyrics are relevant - I can only assume the idea for the video was conceived under the influence of something stronger than fermentation fumes.

The rhythm is slightly faster than my usual kneading rate, but in the same way top athletes often run to music that has a slightly faster beat than they find comfortable to improve stamina, my quest to be a finely honed baking machine will not succeed without a little pain and sacrifice. 

Anyway, I wanted to make a bread for the table to go with a crunchy salad with a fairly weapon's grade french dressing and some cheeses. I made a 'bram' as described in Dan Lepard's The Fresh Loaf. This was done by taking 250g of strong bottle-conditioned ale up to 70 degrees C (I presume to boil off the alcohol) and then 50g of flour was whisked in. When cool, I added a tiny bit of pre-ferment from my sourdough starter (which is not quite ready at five days old but I couldn't resist). I left this mixture for 4 hours by which time it had doubled in volume.

Then:

 - 500g whole grain flour

 - 12g salt

 - 250ml water

 - 150g of the bram

 - A tiny pinch of fresh yeast (maybe half a gram) just because my starter is a little green still.

Mix and knead (to the anthem above) and then 20 hours in the fridge. Shaped into a batard and left to warm and prove for 3 hours, then into the oven. I didn't get a photo of it whole (mouths to feed) but here's a crumb shot:

It's a shame one can't upload flavours to the internet but it's got a really moist, fluffy crumb that has a lovely malty, nutty flavour. Great for soaking up the salad dressing and you can taste it along side fairly powerful cheeses. I'll make it again for sure. Pleasingly light for a 100% whole grain - I tried to be gentle during the numerous stretch and folds and shaping, and the long slow fermentation helped a lot. My sourdough starter will be one week old tomorrow so this week I'll do my first sourdough. I seem to have regressed to eight-year-old boy levels of excitement. I shall also try and find a slightly more high quality camera (with a flash!) as these grainy, blurry iphone shots are letting the side down.

There's been a lot of discussion here about Hamelman's seeded levains (5 Grain Sourdough and Seeded Levain).  Here is an alternative recipe which I find more to my taste-buds and I encourage fans of seeded bread to give it a try.

Although Della Fattoria uses a stiff 49% levain rather than Hamelman's 125%, I think the flavor differences lies more in the mix of ingredients than the method. The flour is half whole wheat (about four times more than Hamelman), with  the remaining flour  "reduced bran" (98% of the germ and 20% of the bran). In other words, this is mostly a wholemeal bread, rather than a white bread augmented with a touch of whole grain.

The following recipe is adapted from Rose Levi Beranbaum's "Sourdough Wheat Bread with Seeds" from her Bread Bible, which she got from Eve Weber of Della Fattoria.  Although you can purchase reduced bran flour from Guisto's, I followed Beranbaum in "recreating" it by adding 2.8% germ and 1.4% bran to 95.8% all purpose flour.  Be careful your whole wheat flour is fresh--not bitter to the taste, and smells fruity when mixed with water. And freeze your germ and bran so they don't go rancid.  With this much whole grain any bitterness will ruin the loaf.

The levain is 49% hydration; the final dough excluding the levain is 79% hydration, with overall hydration of about 76%.  The final dough is tacky.

One Loaf:

Prep:

Starting with about 25g of storage chef, create a mature stiff levain of 100g. (About 12 hours.)

Toast the sunflower, pumpkin and sesame seeds, and cool.  Mix with the flax and cornmeal to add later.

Day of baking:

Add all ingredients except salt to bread machine bowl.  Run on dough cycle enough to mix.  Autolease 20 minutes.  Add salt, and run on dough cycle about 7 minutes.  (Because of the bran and seeds, you want to mix a tad less than usual, and do some extra folds to develop the gluten to compensate.)

Bulk Ferment: 3-4 hours @75-80F.  4 stretch and folds half way through, at about 1 1/2 hours.

Loosely Shape. Relax for 20m.  Shape into batard.

Proof 1- 2 1/2 hours.  It is a moist dough and will spread a bit.

Three diagonal slashes.  Bake at 450F for 10 minutes (with steam at 0 and 5 minutes), then reduce heat to 400F for 20 minutes, then finish at 350F for another 10 or 15 minutes until crust is dark orange.  Or bake it Hamelman style hotter and shorter.

I live in the UK, and purchased a copy of Peter Reinhart's Whole Grain recipes book as soon as it came out on sale. I was really looking forward to his book, and trying out complex, wholegrain flavour breads.

However, every recipe i have tried so far has came out too sweet, and my biga and poolish always come out too wet, much wetter than the consistency in his pictures.

Has anyone else had a similar problem with Peter's recipes? Am I doing something wrong?

HP

This is a sourdough batard i baked using a TEFAL small grill oven that i found in my friend's house.

Recipe:

(BIGA):

65g Starter (85% Hydration)

50g "Sifted" white Whole wheat flour (25%)

50g Whole Barley Flour (25%)

50g Whole Spelt flour (25%)

50g All Purpose Flour (25%)

140g Water (70%)

After mixing and kneading for 5 minutes, rest and knead again after 5 minutes for another 5 minutes utill smooth and tacky, not sticky. Round, and store in a refrigerator for 24 hours and upto 3 days.

(SOAKER):

10g Fine sea salt

50g "Sifted" white Whole wheat flour (25%)

50g Whole Barley Flour (25%)

50g Whole Spelt flour (25%)

50g All Purpose Flour (25%)

140g Water (70%)

After mixing and kneading for 5 minutes, rest and knead again after 5 minutes for another 5 minutes utill smooth and tacky, not sticky. Round, and store at room temperature for 24 hours. If more, store in refrigerator for upto 3 days.

(MIXING):

I cut both BIGA and SOAKER into pieces and joined them together in a large bowl. As the BIGA dough is acidified from the levain, it held shape properly. I added 5 gram salt, and gently kneaded for 10 minutes until smooth, rounded into a ball and left to ferment.

(FERMENTATION):

Gentel stretch and fold in the bowl every 1/2 hour for 2 hours, followed by stretch and fold on a floured bench after another 1/2 hour.

(PRE-SHAPING, and SHAPING):

GEntly Spread the dough into a square (do not deflate). Preshape into a batard, leave for 5 minutes, and shape into a batard, and placing the dough seam side up in a Proofing basket for 45 minutes. Pre-heat the oven for 35 minutes with a stone, and River pebbles in an iron sheet as a steaming source.

(BAKING):

After 45 min. Invert the Dough on a peel and transfer the dough into the Oven, and pour hot water on the pebbles to create steam (mind your oven glass), reduce temperature from 500F to 450F.

Remove sheet containg pebbles after 15min. and continue to bake for another 30 minutes until golden brown. Transfer to a cooling rack, and cut after 2 hours.

Taste: I liked the tangy sour flavor of wholegrains. It made an excellent toast, with sliced emmental cheese as a topping. I could have had a fluffier more open crumb by using 10g commercial yeast in the final dough , but opted not to.

Will I Duplicate it another time? I may, but then i would like to include commercial yeast to boost it, as the starter was sluggish and more acidic due to only 1 refreshment from the fridge.

Mebake

I made the multi-grain bagels from Peter Reinhart's Wholegrain Baking cookbook and they were superb! My husband and I spent this past week eating our morning bagels, toasted and smeared with--for me, peanut butter, for him, tofu cream cheese. They held up well and I have half of one bagel left! I will be boiling and baking some more soon--another variation this time. For my multigrain selection I used: rolled oats, flax seed and cornmeal, topped them with toasted sesame seeds and poppy seeds. Excellent. Photo of them on my blog: http://veganthyme.blogspot.com

I have already written about Bäcker Süpke's wholegrain spelt bread with whole grains in my 'other blog'.
But I think the TFL blog would be a much more appropriate place for this recipe.

I've made this bread several times by now, and it always turned out flawlessly. It's nothing I could claim any credit for, but , seeing how charming Meister Süpke is in his comments, I don't really think he'd mind the extra publicity. So I sat down and translated the original recipe, hoping to spread this around the blogosphere a little.

There are only two minor changes I made to the original recipe, apart from the translation, that is.

For one, I shied away from adding the soft, boiled grains to the dough at the very beginning and kneading them for half an hour. I feared they would completely disintegrate and so I decided to add them only for the last ten minutes. And it works very well, the grains remain whole and apparently it makes for something like a double hydration technique, with the dough being able to build up strength before I add the final bits of liquid with the grains.

Also, the original recipe calls for a bit of 'Brotgewürz', bread spices. Which is all very nice, but also entirely undefined as far as I know. So I guessed and used ground caraway and coriander seeds in equal proportions. Which turned out to be one of my luckier guesses lately. Both spices blend pitch perfectly with the taste of the spelt, warming and brightening the taste without being really distinguishable on their own.

This bread has become a constant fixture of our diet, and I can only stress that it is the least 'healthy' tasting whole-grain bread I've ever come across. It never stops to amaze me that it's really brown and not grey, that it's rather sticky than crumbly, open-crumbed and yet perfectly sliceable with a nice but demure crunch to the crust.

Roasted in the oven with just a few drops of honey until the corners start to turn dark, this bread makes a perfect treat on its own, or a great coaster underneath a grillt goat's cheese, or basically anything that needs a solid, earthy partner.

The only thing I am not really happy with is the name, unwieldy as it is. Even in German with its infatuation with endless strings of words it's a rare thing to need 47 letters to name a single bread. But for a bread with such a long list of strong points, I am more than willing to put up with a lot, even this behemoth of a name.

Bäcker Süpke's wholegrain spelt bread with whole grains
(translation and any mistakes are mine)
(makes two 850g loafs)

for the boiled grains
200g spelt grains
400ml water

for the sourdough
340g wholegrain spelt meal
10g ripe sourdough starter
340g warm water

for the soaker
200g wholegrain spelt flour
20g salt
120g water

for the final dough
190g wholegrain spelt flour
7g dry yeast (one sachet)
[EDIT: The original recipe uses 10g presumably fresh yeast, equaling half a sachet dry yeast.]
40g runny honey
1 heaped teaspoon ground caraway
1 heaped teaspoon ground coriander seeds (or more, to taste)

for decoration
rolled spelt, about 2 tablespoons

On the day before baking, bring the grains and the water to boil in a small pot. Cover and leave to simmer gently for about 10 minutes, then take off the flame, stir, and set aside, covered.

Mix all the ingredients for the sourdough until just incorporated. Cover and set aside.

Mix all the ingredients for the soaker until just incorporated. Cover and set aside. Leave all three bowls to ferment overnight in a cool room, but not the fridge, for a minimum of 16 hours.

On the day of baking, combine the sourdough, the soaker and the final ingredients in the bowl of your mixer and knead at lowest speed for twenty(sic) minutes.
I am not kidding. The original recipe says twenty minutes and the dough really needs every second of it. You'll see, in this case it makes all the difference between wet flour and a dough.

Leave to proof for an hour. Deflate the dough and add the boiled, cold grains.
The original recipe says to discard eventually remaining water, but I add it to keep the amount of added water identical each time. Never had much of it left with the grains, anyway.

Knead at low speed for another ten minutes.
That's half an hour kneading all together. Any wheat dough would be a neat rubber ball by now, but here, it just works perfectly.

Pour into a rectangular baking tin lined with non-stick paper. Even the dough and cover loosely with the rolled spelt. Leave to proof in a warm place for about an hour to one hour and a half.
The dough will increase about 20% in volume at most, and when ready will stop springing back if gently poked.

Preheat your oven to 220°C. Bake with steam for the first minutes and immediately reduce temperature to about 160°C. Bake for 100 minutes. Take out and leave to cool on a rack. Rest a day or at least until fully cooled before cutting.

Freezes perfectly well, and tastes especially well toasted.
We usually bake on stock and freeze the sliced  bread, thawing individual slices in the toaster. Talk about two sparrows and one stone.

Some more wise remarks of Bäcker Süpke:

• Always add all the salt to the soaker. Otherwise, the enzymes of the wholegrain flour will produce harmful byproducts leading to a grumbling stomach.
• Wholegrain doughs, especially wholegrain spelt doughs, have to be wet - rather add a little more water.
• Bake long and 'slow' to get all that moisture out of the bread.
• Always use very little yeast and long final proofs, else you wouldn't get a sliceable bread.
• Playing with the honey and the spices is a great way of tweaking this recipe!

Hello again

This is a bread which I had made once before(with minimal success) a long time ago when I was still a relative sourdough beginner, and I thought I would try it again to see if my new techniques learned here, and the countless hours pouring over my bread book library would produce better results. The formula is courtesy of breadtopia.com a site I visit from time to time to watch their great videos. I followed the formula exactly except as noted in italics below. I also changed the mixing, and fermenting schedule to better fit my personal schedule.

Biga

• 200 grams water
• 120 grams ripe sourdough starter (100% Hydration)
• 236 grams white whole wheat flour (the original recipe only called for whole wheat flour)

Final Dough

• 274 grams warm water(I felt the dough was too dry and added approx. 2-3 additional Tbsp)
• 85 grams whole rye flour
• 250 grams AP flour(the original recipe called for bread flour)
• 170 grams whole spelt flour
• all of biga
• 13 grams salt

Method

1.) The night before the mix make up the biga and allow to ferment at room temp. for 5 hours or until visible activity is observed. Then refrigerate for up to 24 hours or until ready to use.

2.) The next day take the biga out of the fridge and cut into small pieces, then place all ingredients except the salt into the bowl of a mixer and mix for 2 minutes to fully integrate all of the ingredients.

3.) Autolyse for 20-30 minutes.

4.) Sprinkle the salt on top of the dough, and mix for 3-4 minutes on medium speed until moderate gluten develpment.

5.) Ferment 3 hours with folds spaced evenly throughout.

6.) Portion dough into desired size and lightly round, allow to bench rest 20-30 minutes.

7.) Shape as desired and immedietly place into fridge overnight.

8.) Preheat oven with stone and steaming vessel to 450degF.

9.) Take dough straight from refrigerator, slash and load into oven. Steam as desired. Bake until bread shows rich color, and internal temperature is at least 205degF.

Anyways I think my results were much better then my first attempt(sorry no photos), and if you want to see the recipe in it's unedited format you can see it at breadtopia.com

Kevin