July 28: Planning? What's that? 40% Rye Banana loaves

With the forecast for cooler temps and a plan in place for a comfortably paced bake, I naturally had to find some ways to mess with it...

This is how it really works in my kitchen:

LEVAIN:

A couple of days in advance, pull out 10g of 65% hydration rye starter from fridge, feed with 40g / 40g, be concerned that it takes over 10 hours to do anything, and decide to

a) refresh the main rye starter since it obviously is getting low on yeast, and

b) refresh the durum starter just in case it is getting too acidic and low on yeast, too, and

c) try a new levain off of the remains of a levain built the previous week (just in case the others don’t come back to life).

Re-read all of the wonderful advice from Mini Oven and Lechem and dabrownman and Debra Wink on building / maintaining starters, and try to keep a balance between large enough feeds to allow the yeast population to grow while not diluting the acidity too much.

End up with far more levain, in both rye and durum, than needed for planned bake so put it all in the fridge. 

Start with the planned bake, then make a last second decision to use up part of the excess with a couple of banana rye loaves. Due to mix of hydration in the various builds, end up using 250g flour / 240g water for 25% pre-fermented flour.  The high ratio of pre-fermented flour should allow for quick timing (same-day bake) while still keeping a good sour flavour.

DOUGH:
Autolyse 150g dark rye flour, 600g all purpose, 15g chocolate rye malt, and 7g white rye malt with 500g banana mixed with 185g water for about 30 minutes.

Mix in levain and 15g salt, and knead the sticky mass for about 10 minutes, wetting hands as needed.  Realize that your usual formula includes toasted oat bran and wheat germ in a porridge, and that you left those out, but kept in the water for it --- and that the resulting 80% hydration is just way over the top for this weather and recipe.  The dough is beyond sticky.  The levain hit the dough at 10:30 a.m.

Cover and let rest for 20 minutes, while doing a quick toast of 18g wheat germ, and 17g oat bran, and cooling it in the freezer.  Add them to the sticky mass, and knead again with wet hands until it seems more like dough (add about 15g of water while kneading to keep it from becoming a permanent part of your fingers). Second knead was 11:00 - 11:10

Cover and let rest for 20 minutes, then knead until dough feels more developed. Transfer to clear ferment container. This mix was 11:30 - 11:40.

Bulk ferment until dough is airy and increased in size, doing stretch-and-fold every 30 minutes for first two hours, and then leave until ready.  Stretch-and-folds done at 12:00 and 12:30, and again just before 1:00 when the dough has more than doubled and the husband asked if the alien is supposed to be breathing like that…

Dump dough out on to clean work surface, while weighing it, then grab old kitchen calculator with wonky display to determine should be 2 pieces of 885g each.  Divide dough, weigh one piece, and cut off anything in excess of 885g and add to second piece.  Pre-shape and cover at 1:10, and walk away wondering why one piece seems bigger than the other.  While dough is resting, re-calculate using new calculator (that has a fully working display), and realize it should be 985g each (so you actually did 1085g + 885g), so go back and hack 100g off the big piece and add it to the small one and re-shape it.  Allow to rest for about 10 minutes.

Prepare banneton to deal with smaller loaf size by adding in small rolled up towels at the ends.  Ignore husband noting that it’s awfully sweet to be setting up pillows and  bankies for the aliens.

Lightly flour work surface and tops of dough pieces, then attempt to shape in to small loaves and place in prepared bannetons to proof. Discover that the dough is still beyond sticky, so try the technique of adding more flour to hands and work-surface to make it easier to work with...so...much...flour...  Put one straight in to the fridge in a bag and leave the other on the counter covered with a damp towel. Proofing started at 1:30.

Realize that the outside temperature is now at 32 deg c with totally clear skies, and that the kitchen is heating up to suit... Curse and continue on.

Preheat oven with roaster to 475 degrees, and be ready to bake as soon as loaf on the counter is proofed.

First loaf was already over-proofed by the time the oven was hot at 2:05, but I was too hot, tired, and cranky to want to re-shape it, so scored it and baked covered at 450 degrees for 20 minutes, then uncovered at 425 degrees for 35 minutes to an internal temperature of 202 degrees.

Pulled second loaf out of fridge while oven was re-heating, and it was over-proofed, with a couple of small pin-holes in the top surface.  I decided to treat it like a rye loaf, so docked it, smoothed the top with a damp hand, very lightly scored it, and baked covered for 25 minutes at 450 degrees, then uncovered at 425 degrees for 30 minutes, to internal temperature of 205 degrees.  Left in oven with door open and temp off for 10 minutes, then removed to rack to finish cooling.  Ignored husband wondering if the oven door was open and the light was on because the poor alien was afraid of the dark…

After letting them cool completely for about 8 hours on racks, put in to sealed plastic bags overnight.  They felt dampish the next day, so wrapped in clean cotton towels and allowed to rest for another full day. 

When finally sliced them up, the overall flavour, texture, and moisture level were great, but there were definite bits of flour in odd places from using the extra flour when shaping. 

We ended up with far more bread than planned, so the freezer is fully stocked --- which turned out for the best since I managed to sprain my foot in a gopher hole on Sunday and haven't figured out yet how to juggle a hot loaf while on crutches.

Hope you all keep baking happy!

PS - hmmm, I wonder if I could one-hand a sheet of rolls while balancing on one crutch.... ;)