Sunflower, Flax Seed & Hemp Hearts Sourdough
My friends finally convinced me to sell them my bread so this is my first batch of loaves for this endeavour. I am charging them just enough to cover my costs to supply them and the soup kitchen with bread. Of course, do I stick to the tried and true! Nope! I had to change a few things and was rewarded with overproofed loaves. Serves me right!
The first thing was that I used the starter from MichaelLily of Duluth's Best Bread. This is an all white flour starter; mine is all rye. Secondly I shaped the batch of dough into 3 boules of ~750 grams rather than 2 boules of ~1100 grams. And thirdly, I baked them in 3 quart Dutch ovens using Lazy Loafer's method, temperatures and timing.
This last thing turned out well. I did have one loaf with an almost burnt bottom and I think that I must have put that one back on the bottom shelf rather than the top.
The loaves seem to have a really thin crust so that part is great but I didn't get huge oven spring which was to be expected since I felt I was putting balloons into the pots rather than a round of dough. I used 13% prefermented flour which is what I normally use so I am not sure why they overproofed. I would have thought that the smaller boules would have cooled down faster in the fridge but then again, I made 4 batches of dough when I usually make two.
I am thinking of dropping the amount of prefermented flour to 10-11% when I use Michael's starter and/or dropping my fridge temp a bit more. Next week, I will use my usual starter and see what happens unless someone has another idea. I think I will drop the temperature of the fridge anyhow.
So here is the recipe:
1. Toast 75 g sunflower seeds, 37 g Hemp hearts and 37 g brown Flax seeds. Soak the Flax and Hemp in 100 g water overnight. In the morning, add 50 g organic yogurt and let sit for a few hours.
2. Autolyse all above with 630 g water, 574 g unbleached flour, 100 g multigrain flour, 109 g fresh Spelt flour (ohhhh, maybe this is the culprit for the overproofing!), and 197 g Fresh Selkirk wheat flour. Let sit for 3 hours.
3. Mix in 23 g sea salt, 275 g levain (80%) and 57 g water.
4. Do four sets of folds 30 minutes apart and let bulk ferment for a total of 5 hours or until doubled. I do this in my oven with the light on.
5. Divide into 3 750-gram loaves, preshape, rest and do a final shape. Place in bannetons and into fridge for a 10 hour proof.
6. Preheat oven and Dutch oven to 475F, load dough in pots, and immediately drop temp to 450F for 25 minutes. Remove lids, switch the Dutch ovens from lower to upper rack and vice-versa, drop temp to 425 F and bake for another 20 minutes.
Crumb shot coming later!
Comments
How did the loading go with the new cast iron pots? I'm always in a bit of a panic because it takes time and planning to deal with six or eight hot iron pots, with loading dough, removing lids (and finding someplace to put them all!) and swapping pots around, all with the oven door open. Well, not during the dough loading, but you know what I mean.
Re the overproofing - I wonder if you had some excess enzyme activity going on during the three hour autolyse that weakened the dough? Try an hour and see if that makes a difference. Personally, I don't like doing the final proof in the fridge overnight because I can't see what the dough is doing, and there are so many variables that will make a dough ready to bake (or beyond ready to bake). I prefer to watch it. I know this method has worked well for you in the past though, so maybe it's just me and my micro-environment.
Re costing of the bread - I'd recommend you build in a little cushion above the cost of your ingredients. The prices of these will inevitably go up and then you'll have to keep raising the price or risk losing money. People tell me my bread is underpriced and they would happily pay more for it, but I make enough of a profit to get new equipment now and then, or buy costlier ingredients to test new things, etc. I also charge pretty much the same price for all the breads, even though the cost of ingredients is much higher for some than others. It all evens out in the end.
Looking forward to the crumb shot!
I kept telling myself to slow down or I would end up with a nasty burn! The loading was a bit of a pain because the loaves were so big due to the proofing! I was thinking of you while I was doing it and decided that 6 at once was plenty! I don't know how you do it with 8!
The oven temp dropped drastically during the switcharoo. I did put the oven on convection at times so that there wouldn't be any hot spots while it was reheating due to the door opened.
You might be right about the autolyse. I have been doing a two hour autolyse and liked the results I have been getting but I had a pedicure in the middle of things and thought it would have been okay. I guess that's another parameter that I changed! Ha ha!
As to the overnight proof, I find the cold dough so much easier to handle while loading the pots. I think I have done a same day bake once or twice in the last year! My plan was also to bake early in the morning, cool the loaves and then people can come and pick it up between 4-5 pm. That way I am not stuck at home all day waiting for people to show up.
I did build in a bit of a cushion which is a good thing because as I was going along yesterday and today, I realized that there were a number of things I didn't account for like the rice flour for the baskets, the cornmeal for turning out the loaves onto the counter, the parchment paper in the bottom of the pots and the plastic bags to put the loaves in. They probably don't add up to much but they still add up. Anyhow, I am not going to get rich for sure! Not sure it would even pay for the grain mill I am lusting after.
Yes, the cost of paper bags, labels, printer ink, as well as increased electrical bill (some days the big oven is on for 4-5 hours), things like extra-long oven mitts (and ointment and bandages for the burns! :) ). Also depreciation on the mixer, the oven and other things that I will probably need to replace if I keep this up for any length of time. And purchasing things like new bread pans (and cast iron pots!).
Personally, I'm lusting after an Ankarsrum mixer. I need something between my KA (which can only handle dough for two loaves) and the big mixer (which is great for eight and up, and does a pretty good job of six, but four is a problem).
I have found that 750 gram loaves are definitely the max for the 3 quart pots. I have more success with 600 - 650 grams of dough; much easier to load and still makes nice-sized loaves.
want to pay for it they I say let them:-) My Nutrimill only cost $159. Using fresh flour is worth a dollar a loaf so with two people buying bread a week it would only take a year and half to pay for it. A loaf of bread costs me about a dollar to make if Lucy doesn't go crazy. So selling it for $4 a loaf makes you a tidy $4 a week profit which pays for your 4 loaves for the soup kitchen each week. A win win win for everyone.
Lucy says it is a 84.229% chance that it is the spelt that caused the over proofing and 15.77% chance that it was the long autolyse - together they account for 99.999% chance with .001% she can not account for.... probably because she is only a baking apprentice 2nd class. Since it tastes great and didn't collapse, it is 99% success most of the time:-)
Well done and happy baking Danni
but I figured that each loaf including ingredients and electricity was 2.29. That does not include the extra flour for shaping, parchment paper (although I can reuse those a few times, or the plastic bags I put them in. I really would like to know how you get it down to a buck a loaf!
rye berries for 64 cents a pound. A 750 g loaf of bread has about 420 g of flour of some kind so that would be about 32 cents for the 50% whole grains and about 17 cents for the AP. So the salt is basically free. My oven at 3,000 watts uses about 35 cents of electricity for 1.5 hours and that is divided by 4 so the total is 58 cents leaving 42 cents for various add ins as an average say - 20% or 150 g. An average of $2.99 a pound for add ins makes them 99 cents. So the most expensive loaf would be $1.27 or so if you don't go crazy on expensive add ins like Lucy does and the least expensive 58 cents - the average about a buck. If you start expensing equipment like a mixer, mill, DO's and oven then you have to add more say another buck. Still at $4 a loaf you are covering everything pretty easy. It is the space and people you hire that really costs you big time.
I don't ever use bench flour, not ever at least for SD bread and never use bags for selling since I don't sell but see no need for them. I do use rice flour for the baskets but I have used the same $1 bag for 5 years and I get my baskets at Goodwill for 50 cents each. Tell them to bring their own bags if they want them. I didn't get bags in France, they just handed me the baguettes and I put them in my own bag if I had one or just carried them other wise.
Now if you make craft, porter beer bread at $1.50 a bottle like Lucy does then the bread costs that much more, so $2.27 tops.
Happy baking
My unbleached flour is 64 cents a pound and my whole grain berries average $2.13 a pound including shipping. Mind you I can find cheaper unbleached flour but it has Azodicarbonamide in it. Not fond of things like that in my bread.
Living in the middle of nowhere really doesn't help and there are places in Canada that are way worse. My daughter's friend is in northern Yukon and she paid $5 for a single wrinkled green pepper. So consider yourself lucky to be able to get things at such a good price!
Maybe I should move to the US. Uh no! I forgot! You have Trump! ;-)
My red and white wheat berries are from the Winco bins at 56 cents and rye berries are from Smart and final Bind at 67 cents. The spelt, buckwheat, barley, Kamut and other assorted grains are from the bins a Whole Foods and they are very pricey from 1.19 to 2.99 a pound so I don't use much of them. We are lucky to live in the cheapest pace to buy food in the USA with 8 major and several minor chains fighting for the business here in the Phoenix area.... plus much of the winter veg is grown here too! Red bell peppers are on sale here 3 ro 9 cents this week with heads of iceberg lettuce for 99 cents. Plus . killer greens and tomatoes from the winter pot garden in the back yard too.
We are blessed with cheap food and why so many Canadians winter here with the real estate so cheap. The Canadian Snowbirds bought up the real estate during the crash in 1007-2008 when the Canadian dollar was very strong at near parity and are selling now..... more than doubling their money and repatriating their dollar windfall at .78 Canadian........ making another 20% on the exchange rate. Canadians are now living high on the hog. As soon as it gets hot at the end of April, they are back to the cool Canada Springtime. They live the best of both worlds.
I redid my calculations and my costs per loaf are actually a bit less than than what I stated. They are about 40 cents less but this is still a lot more than what it costs you to make a loaf. At any rate, I am not going to be making a living from this. ;-)
The basement refrigerator isn't cooling properly! Hubby went to get a drink and he found it just coolish, not cold. I took the temperature of the liquids in there and they were 54 F. Great! :-p Just what I needed right now as I have 3 loaves to cold proof that I am sending with my daughter tomorrow morning. I found room in the upstairs refrigerator and we will have to figure out what's up with the other one tomorrow.
We have a small community market within walking distance and a few months ago I supplied them with baguettes. Came back later that day and o,my one was left. Since them they I regularly hear that people,were asking for that French bread. I called around to a few commercial kitchens since I don't want to do it again unless I can find a real oven but nobody has available steam ovens. Its just too much work in a home setup. I can bake 6 full size (55cm) loaves at a time but even still that's only 12 (considering time in between each 20 minute bake) in 1 hour. It would be a real treat to be able to bake a couple dozen at a time. What I did notice was when I baked 12 at a time I really had to move fast and counter intuitively, each loaf was shaped really nicely !
I am making 12 loaves and that's it! I have no interest in making this a business. I am retired with a nice pension and this is a hobby that I enjoy sharing with my friends.
over proofed or not.. I'd be up for some! I'm with dab - you create something of value, let people acknowledge that by paying you for it.. let yourself be appreciated.. now where's the soup kitchen? I'd like to try some of that bread! :)
and the crumb is quite decent!
So it all worked out and people are enjoying the bread!
Oh, I almost forgot, the soup kitchen is the Dew Drop Inn in Thunder Bay! =D
.. you're too modest.. that's better than decent! Great job.. but Thunder bay's too far a drive from Toronto! .. Very well done!
in Toronto on Tuesday possibly with some cranberry toasted pumpkin seed loaves? Maybe I better not. You might hold her up for the bread. Ha ha!
We don't hold up kids walking around with great tasting bread! :) It's a fantastic and safe city (ok, mostly safe!)..
Good to hear that you aren't planning to ambush her! She isn't a kid anymore though... she is 29.