Rye and whole wheat and spelt berries and....
There were so many wonderful looking breads with lots of stuff in them posted in the last week that I decided I wanted to play too.
I had picked up a bag of spelt berries and ground some into flour to use when I was trying to get a whole wheat starter starting. The bag and the leftover flour have been just sitting in the pantry and when I saw a couple of posts using "toadies", I thought that maybe the spelt berries would work out well like that. I dry toasted spelt berries, which was really cool - they popped in the pan! And then toasted some rolled oats, and some pecans, and sesame seeds.
I made a poolish with rye flour, left out overnight. I had been putting rye starter discards into my everyday bread in place of a poolish, but I did not have any discards, so I thought that a rye poolish would impart some of that rich flavor to the bread. I tried breaking down the toasted spelt berries in my small food processor, but that did not work, so into my Krup coffee grinder for a few spins around. I tossed the oats and the pecans into the food processor and buzzed them around a bit as well. All of that went into the bowl with AP flour, WW flour, some spelt flour, the toasted sesame seeds, water, honey and yeast.
The bread is very tasty, but I am not sure that I like the feel of the spelt berries. They have a great flavor, but they are a bit clunky in the bread. Maybe I could try soaking or scalding them next time.
I think that this bread should grill up really fine - so far its tasty just as it is.
Theresa
Comments
bread much more if the berries were scalded and then soaked or sprouted . Not doing so is good way to break a tooth which would make that some very expensive bread indeed!. It sure sounded and looked very good though. The taste should be right up there too! Next time you will make a bread that chews as well as it tastes and looks! Love your version of Toadies too!
Happy baking
Notwithstanding the minor glitch of spelt berries, this bread looks quite tasty. And you can't go wrong with dabrownman's toadies! As an alternative to scald on my lazy days, I put wholegrains in rice cooker with double water and cook them before making soaker or mash. Have a great time baking!
i will called it a good bread. beautiful ingredients that were carefully thought of and put together. as Dabrownman suggested the berries scalded and soaked or sprouted make a better n healthier bread. it will be easier on our stomach to digest and absorb nutrients.
beautiful crumb
evon
it feels nice to create your own recipe doesn't it? That's what keeps me going. Very inventive creation. Like DA said above a scald would probably be the way to go. I've tried soaking overnight in hot water but even that didn't work so well since I didn't grind them down.
for all of your great comments. I have been reading about the breads that everyone who commented here have been baking, so its great to hear from you all.
I am unsure where to go with soaking and scalding dry ingredients for bread. When do you do it? How long should things soak/scald? Do you include the liquid in the liquid measurements of the final dough? How or when is it incorporated into the bread? As for sprouting, do you actually put sprouted, growing, green grains in the bread and bake? Hoo boy - there is a whole lot to grasp with this. I ordered Hammelman's Bread earlier this week and hopefully I will find some of the answers to these questions there, or I will be driving you folks crazy! I have been pretty much flying by the seat of my pants, bread-wise, so maybe learning some better techniques will smooth things out in the long run.
I will say that I toasted a couple of slices off my loaf this morning and had it with my homemade strawberry jam and it ate very well! The rich and nutty flavor of the bread went well with the sweetness of my jam, and the spelt berries are not hard, just there. I think that toasting them before adding them to bread took away some of the "break your tooth" hardness of the berry.
Theresa
you just cover the whole berries in water by at leat 2 inches in a sauce pan and bring them to the boil then turn down to simmer for 10 minutes and then let sit in the water for 4 hours. Sieve off the soaking water and use it for the liquid in your bread if you want. So not to get too much water in the mix i run a paper towel through the scalded berries trying to sop up any extra water.
You can take 25 g of the flour from the mix and add 100 g of water (not from the liquid) and then put them in a sauce pan on medium and whisk them together until it turns into a think gravy. Don't count the water in the hydration calculations, This is a water roux or Tang Zhong. Makes the crumb moist and soft without having to enrich the dough with sugar, butter or milk.
Janet makes a gruel which is similar to a roux but has cracked wheat, oats, bran, other cracked grain, toadies and simmers it for 30 minutes. In this case i wouldn't include the dry or the wet parts in the hydration calcs.
As far as sprouts go, you don't want any light on them as they germinate so they won't turn green. If you are adding sprouts to bread, you are only going to let them sprout for 1 or 2 days max until they 'chit', have little white roots just breaking the surface of the shell.
If you let sprouts go for 4-5 days then yoiu can dry them slowly in temperatures under 150 F. When dry you can grind them in a coffee mill and you have made diastaic or white malt to add to bread. If you dry them at temperatures over 150 to 300 F and then grind them you will have made non diatatic malt or red malt. Sprouts and malts are so the great additives to bread.
White malt adds the enzymes to flour that break the protein bonds in carbs and starches can convert them to sugars yeast and labs eat. Red malt adds color to the crumb and helps brown the crust and adds flavor like toadies do. Here is a picture of the sprouts for bread and malt.
them moist - not wet. After 96 hours from start to finish the berries were ready to dry and looked like this.
5 days they look like this - ready for malt making.
Here they are after about a day and a half.
You just managed to pack a lot of great information into your response. Thanks so much for taking the time to do that. one more question - if the grains are just spouted for a day or so, are they then incorporated into the dough without drying and grinding?
I think that the interest and texture level of my everyday bread just took a giant leap up the scale.
Theresa
After a day or two of sprouting they are soft and chewy. Rye takes 1 day to chit but for some reason WW always takes 2 days. I also do a multi grain sprout mix with spelt added and that takes 2 days because of the WW. The bottom picture actually has 5 different grains in it. Nothing like some added texture to go with added flavor and color in bread - not to mention added health properties. With soakers, seeds and nuts dried fruits, various liquids and who knows what else, the formula varieties for bread are nearly endless.
Happy baking
I have to let you know, I just had a slice of my spelt berry bread that started this thread, and the spelt has softened up that it is just nice texture now. The flavor keeps getting deeper, this has been a pretty great trial - and I owe it all to your "toadies"!
Theresa
Cooked spelt berries (Farro) might work a little better. You can cook it like brown rice - I often use a 50/50 farro and brown rice mix as a side dish, they cook at the same rate and with the same water proprtions. Very tasty.
I save the leftovers (if there are any) and throw them into whatever bread I'm making, as long as the formula is appropriate - sourdough white whole wheat varieties lately. They give a nice texture and flavor to the bread and uses up leftovers! Win/win!
that does not exist. The Italians muddied things up by calling einkorn, emmer, and spelt grains all 'farro' by attaching the small, medium and large designates to them. So cooked spelt berries are simply that - and happy baking.
You've spiked my curiosity. Please tell more!
I used 30g rye, 30g water, and a pinch of yeast, mixed and left out overnight. I like the extra demension rye seems to give my everyday, yeasted bread and this is a good way to do it.
Theresa