100% WG Rye & Wheat Sprouted YW/SD w/ Walnuts, Prunes, Cranberries & Sunflower

Last time we under filled the new Oriental Pullman pan so this week Lucy though she would overfill it.   It was perfectly filled until she duped in a bunch of add ins that made for about 400 g of too much dough.  From famine to feast still means the pan is struggling to do its thing because of a lackadaisical master and overly ambitious apprentice bordering on a doofus twofer.

So to really mess things up we decided to do an hour autolyze with a bunch of sprouted and whole grain rye and wheat too.  We decided to do a retard for a high percent rye bread – oh no! And we are doing a total 19% pre-fermented flour in two different levains which is a lot, about twice as much, for a long retarded dough on a near 100 F day or two in AZ.

We are hoping for 3 things I guess.  That the rye bran in the SD rye levain will make it very acidic which helps control amylase action in rye breads.  That the long cold retard temperature will also help control the amylase action in rye breads – enzyme and other wee beasties of all kinds don’t like the cold and slow way down.

Also, we hoped that the very long cold retard of weeks on end for the two rye starters have managed to increase the LAB to yeast ratio in the starters levain and dough so more acid will be produced helping to keep the amylase in check.  We also hoped that the separate YW wheat bran levain will help to open the crumb on this very heavy, whole grain bread as it usually does and has so well in the past.

Then Lucy decided to do a set of slap and folds and 3 sets of stretch and folds to do some gluten development on a bread that doesn’t have much of any of that.  She is a real renegade for sure and possibly a stealth Vicious Viking who will eviscerate you faster than vittles at best and upchuck on your toes at worst!

Lucy went for the really dark side with the Boulder Beer Shake Chocolate Porter for the autolyse liquid, some barley malt syrup, red malt and a bit of cocoa.  But, she went purist too by omitting the aromatic seeds we usually would put in a bread like this, so we could taste the whole and sprouted grains better which sounds a lot better than the real deal being….. that we just forgot to put them in.

She chucked in the add ins into the mix on the first set of stretch and folds, forgetting the squash seeds we had purchased for this bread,  which were done with a wet bench scraper and one wet hand to keep the sticky mess at bay with some luck in that regard.  Still, it was heavy, sticky at 94% hydration and gloppy going into the tall pan.

We shaped the top with a wet spatula and stuck more sunflower seeds to the top, bagged it and chucked it into the fridge with no bulk ferment at all since we were worried the long retard of 21 hours would likely over proof the dough anyway.  At the 11 hour mark, the dough looked fully proofed with the first cracks starting to form on the top.  Too bad we don’t bake bread at 10 pm around here, if the wife is at home, so it had to wait it out.

We preheated the new GE to 450 F with Mega Steam on the bottom rack once it hit temperature for another 215 minutes of getting the steam up to speed.  At the 21 hour mark it was way more cracked and possibly past its prime, so we sort of reshaped the top with a wet spatula, docked the top with a toothpick and hoped it wouldn’t collapse completely when it hit the heat.

We got lucky in that the bread didn’t collapse but it didn’t spring much either so I’m guessing it was fully proofed.  After 10 minutes we turned the oven down to 425 F and continued steaming for another 10 minutes.  Once the steam came out, we turned the oven down to 350 F convection and continued baking for another 80 minutes

We then took the loaf out of tin after 100 minutes total baking time when the loaf was exactly 195 F.  We baked it on the rack for an additional 40 minutes and took it out of the oven to cool on a rack when it hit 205 F. 140 minutes seems like a long time but this is big loaf of bread nearly a double miche at 4 pounds baked weight. Once cooled we wrapped it in plastic for the 24 hour wait before slicing.

It has promise crumb wise….. but it didn’t smell nearly as enticing or exotic as a loaf with aromatic seeds. Without the bread spices, the flavors of the sprouted and whole rye and wheat really stand out.  It was easy to slice in 1/4' sections with no crumbling at all.  Even with the fruits it isn't too sweet.  The crumb is moist and not as open as i would have thought it would be - bout normal for this kind of bread and all the add ins,  I don't think a bread could get moire healthy and hearty.- delicious too!.

Ribs and Salad don't go together well enough.