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A few months ago, Jack Sturgess mentioned that a breadstick challenge stumped most of the British Bake Off contestants. I happened to be making a batch of ciabatta at the time, so I thought, why not dedicate some of the dough to breadsticks. The results were pretty good and we love a crunchy snack with our nightly glass or two of wine. Anyway, after 4 passes, I think I finally have a repeatable process that produces attractive, munchable grissini.

Several weeks after starting this journey, I watched the Bake Off challenge show and saw, to my horror, an assignment that resulted in these massive cheese and olive loafs more on the order of a ficelle or even a baguette. The winner did a passable job on a ludicrous assignment. I'm glad to have been inspired by Jack's mention and happy to have missed the initial broadcast which probably would have put me off my feed enough to never look into how to make decent breadsticks.

So…I mixed up a 2 kilo batch of my 50% Durum ciabatta recipe based on the Community Bake and Alfanso's helpful process. Then while my formed ciabatta were rising on the counter, I chopped a kilo of dough into maybe 50 20g batons. The 80% hydration dough is very sticky, so I've started rolling the batons in semolina before stretching them to half-sheet pan length. You fight the gluten a bit, but I've found that leaving one pan of partially stretched batons to rest while I fill another pan, I'm able to return to the initial batch and get a bit more length on the shorter sticks. I proof them at 80-85 dF for up to an hour depending on how many batches I need to bake. Before baking, I spray the shaped sticks with water and dust with Maldon salt and coarsely ground pepper. Have made versions with rosemary or Parmigiana incorporated into dough during the final mix. Definitely going to stay in my repertoire.

 Phil

I'm still working on learning to bake with 100% whole spelt since I received a lovely Christmas present of a 2 kg bag of Anita's Organic Whole Spelt from the mill!  So to also learn about about the use of a stiff sweet levain I thought I'd use one in this non enriched dough for the first time.  As you may know having a significant amount of sugar in the starter creates osmotic pressure causing the microbes to dehydrate.  This has a greater negative effect on the LAB than it does on the yeast.  Combine this with a low hydration levain and you have a levain that will favour the yeast because of LAB will be at a disadvantage and this will then reduce the acids that are produced in the levain.  That will then reduce the acid that is transferred to your dough.  Also because the stiff sweet levain has favoured the yeast, the fermentation of your dough will go along quickly without the usual associated rate of pH decline.  This was my thinking in planning this bake.

As you know spelt has poor quality gluten, this is because the balance of gliadin and glutenin show an excess of gliadin to glutenin.  This results in a gluten that is excessively extensible and not very elastic.  With this in mind, in theory a stiff sweet levain should prove to be useful in that less acid will be produced during fermentation.  As you know proteases that break down gluten increase in their activity as the pH of the dough drops.  Protease works well between 3.5-4.5 pH. At a pH of 4, there is maximum protease activity. This activity results in smaller protein chains and loose amino acids. Too much protease activity will destroy the gluten structure you might need right before the dough goes into the oven.

Overnight stiff sweet levain

16 g starter 25 g  water 47 g whole spelt 16 g white sugar.  Initial pH 5.2
Fermented at 76ºF.  10 hours later peaked about 3.5x rise and pH 4.86

Dough
453 g Whole stoneground spelt
23.55 g Vital Wheat Gluten
176 g water
10.47 g salt

Handful of spelt flakes to finish.

Using a #40 sieve, sift all of the whole spelt flour and VWG.

This resulted in 151 g of bran and course spelt flour, this was scaled with 302 g boiling water and after cooling placed in the fridge overnight,.

In the morning, add the salt and levain to the water breaking the levain down.  Then add all the sifted flour.  After resting 10 mins knead until it forms a firm dough.  After a 10 mins rest, add the bran/spelt scald folding it in and then mix in a stand mixer until good gluten development.

Remove dough for aliquot jar and pH measurements.  pH of dough was 5.44 before adding the scald and then 5.65 after the scald was fully incorporated.  The dough was left to ferment at 82ºC.

After a 30 mins rest the dough was coil folded twice at 30 mins intervals and then left for the remainder of bulk.  The dough had excellent structure and didn't need more folds.

When the dough reached a 40% rise by aliquot jar the pH had only fallen to 5.24.  This is quite remarkable because typically when using pH to guide fermentation I would see a full 1.0 drop in pH to correlate with a 40% rise by aliquot jar.  This is in keeping with the idea that the stiff sweet levain favoured the yeast and that had as yeast favouring effect in the dough as well.  At this point the dough was given a final shape and after shaping was spritzed with water and rolled in spelt flakes.

The shaped dough, now in a banneton was allowed to complete a warm final proof at 82ºF while the oven was pre-heating to 500ºF until the aliquot jar showed a rise of 60% and a still high pH of 5.1.  While the oven continued to heat the dough was placed in the freezer.  After 30 mins the oven was ready and the dough removed from the oven.  The pH at this point was 4.99.  This is quite remarkable because typically I would see a full 1.3 drop in pH at the time of baking when just following pH and this had a total drop of only 0.67.

Bake with steam at 450ºF for 25 mins.
Vent the oven and remove the steaming equipment.  Normally I would drop the temperature of the oven at this point, but I forgot and left it to bake at 450ºF by accident for another 22 mins.  Typically it would bake at 425ºF for 25 mins or so.

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So what do you think?  Did the theories prove to be true?  The post bake oven spring and bloom would suggest it did, the crumb will be the final verdict.

Jan. 6 - 7, 2022.  78th bake.  RYE!  

This will be my first attempt at a 100% rye. I'm kind of following Denisa's post here: 
https://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/67054/100-whole-grain-rye-sourdough-bread

The goal is to divide her formula by 3 and make one loaf of about 835 g.

My first change, due to the fact that I did not plan ahead, and wanted to get started tonight, was that I did not prepare a fully fermented seed. I had a 100% whole rye starter (fully fermented, then put in fridge) going, but yesterday I added enough whole rye (no water) to the cold starter to make it stiff, and put it immediately back in the fridge, so the added flour was/has not fermented.

I intend to make up for that by using 20 g of under-developed stiff starter instead of 16.7 (50 / 3) g of ripe 100% hydration starter. That's just a guess.

I'm also not going to be able to maintain room temp (21 C, 70 F) over-night in the stove with the light on. So, I will need to extend the pre-ferment beyond the 10 hours specified in her formula, and hopefully look for the same development as shown in her video.

Here's the stone-ground whole rye flour that I used for both the pre-ferment and the final dough:
https://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/69305/

The pre-ferment, at 7:45 pm: 
    20 g stiff, not fully-developed, rye starter.  (would have been 50/3 = 16.7 g of 100% hydration rye seed/chef/starter.)
  148 g water.  420 / 3, plus extra to bring stiff starter to 100% hydration.
  140 g whole rye flour, stone-ground, Malsena brand.  420 / 3 = 140 g. 

--

Her timings and temperatures: 

• Pre-ferment: 10 hours at 21 C / 70 F. Should see bubbles through glass container.
• Mix. 
• First rise (bulk ferment), 1 hour at 29 C / 84 F. 
• Pan the dough, 2nd rise (proof), 1.5 hours at 29 C / 84 F.  Look for small cracks and pinholes.
• Bake with steam, 15 minutes, at 260 C / 500 F. 
• Remove steam, bake 45 minutes at 200 C / 390 F. 
• Remove from oven, wrap in towels for 24 hours, or a minimum 5 hours.

Jan. 7, 2022.

5:45 am. Checked oven. It was 70 F after all, and the pre-ferment was now at the 2.5 cups mark, and well aerated, so I put it in the fridge.

6:45 am. Took pre-terment out of fridge, now at 2 cups level. Warmed some water and began mixing. 

Final dough: 
  all the pre-ferment. 
  warm water:  725 / 3 = 241 g. 
  whole rye flour: 825 / 3 = 275 g. 
  salt: 15 / 3 = 5 g. 
  honey (or barley malt syrup): 50 / 3 = 16 g. 

7:00 am. Finished mixing. Dough temp = 69.9 F.  Bulk ferment (first rise) in oven, about 29 C / 84 F.

8:00 am. Greased a loaf pan with Crisco shortening (out of butter) and lightly floured it, as per video. (Video specified butter.)

8:07 am. Finished panning the dough. Back in oven, aiming for 84 F air temp.

8:52 am. Start oven pre-heat to 260 C / 500 F.  Hope to be ready by 9:37 am. Yes, I took the proofing dough out of the oven before starting the pre-heat. ;-)

Start bake:

I forgot to take a photo. Top of loaf has some pin-holes. Mostly toward edges. Not as many holes as in Denisa's video, but decided a slight under-fermentation was better than risking a collapse.

9:43 am.  Put loaf in oven. Poured 3/4 cup boiling water in steam pan. Oven thermostat set to 500 F, the highest it goes, but this oven is always low by 25 degrees, according to an oven thermometer, so it's only 475 F.  I'll give it 2 extra minutes to compensate, before lowering temp.

10:00 am. Lower temp to 200 C / 390 F. (415 F setting on my oven.)

Looking for a 95 C / 203 F internal temp according to the video.

10:43 am.  Take out. Internal temp 208.9 F.  The loaf collapsed evenly, and is at least 1/2" lower than when it went in the oven.

Let it sit out about 2 hours to cool. And then put in a plastic bag.

5:15 pm. I couldn't wait, and I cut it open. Crumb is nice, but a little moist. I should have wrapped it in a kitchen towel like Denisa said to in the video.

Crust is thick. Taste is good. I can smell and taste the honey.  I miss the caraway and coriander, so I'll include bread spice next time.

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Pre-ferment starter at 1 cup level:

 

Top of pre-ferment, right after mixing:

 

Cold pre-preferment, it shrunk from 2.5 cups to 2 cups while in fridge:

 

Top:

 

Bottom:

 

Side: