Cedar Mountain’s Grass Roots Bread - Mixer Version

Cedar Mountain’s Grass Roots Bread - Mixer Version

This is my first shot at using a mixer to make bread. I spent some time researching what would be best to ensure the same results I have been getting by hand. I finally decided to stick to Trevor’s method but replacing his initial mixing and his Rubaud method with the mixer. Then I followed his sequence of folds as per his Tartine loaf recipe with the addition of a side trip to the fridge to finish off bulk fermentation. This was a really wet dough as I didn’t drain the hulless oats or wild rice as per my first shot at this recipe. I found it a bit harder to judge the dough hydration when my hands weren’t in it. I expect that will come with more practice. *So for this recipe, I have added the extra step of draining the wild rice/hulless oats mix which I didn’t do. *

Recipe:

Makes 3 loaves

Add-ins

25 g hulless oats and 75 g water

38 g wild rice and 114 g water

25 g barley flakes 

50 g large flake oats

175 g water

Dough

75 g rye berries

75 g spelt berries

75 g kamut berries

75 g Red Fife berries

750 g unbleached all purpose flour

725 g filtered water

22 g pink Himalayan salt

40 g local yogurt

250 g 3 stage 100 hydration levain (procedure in recipe)

Bran/all purpose flour for feeding the levain

Mid afternoon the day before:

1. Take 18 g of refrigerated starter and feed it 18 g of filtered water and 18 g of bran. I used bran left over from other bakes where it was sifted out. One also can use Wholewheat flour. Let rise in a warm place (oven with the light on and door cracked open - 82F)
2. Mill the grains and sift to obtain 250 g of high extraction flour. Save the bran for dusting the baskets as well as for another use. 
3. Place the high extraction flour in a tub and add the unbleached flour to it. Cover and set aside.

The night before:

1. Place the hulless oats in a pot with the water. Boil one or two minutes and turn off the heat. Let sit covered overnight on the stove.
2. Put the wild rice and the water in a pot and let soak overnight covered.
3. Before going to bed, feed the levain 36 g of water and 36 g of AP flour flour including any left over high extraction flour. Let that rest in a warm place overnight.

Dough making day:

1. Feed the levain 72 g of filtered water and 72 g of AP flour and let rise 4-5 hours in a warm spot. Mine had more than doubled after 5 hours. 
2. Combine the wild rice and water with the hulless oats and cook gently until the wild rice has bloomed. Both grains should be soft to the bite and most of the water should have disappeared. * Drain well.* Cover and set aside.
3. Cook the barley flakes and the rolled oats in the 175 g of water until the water has been all absorbed. Add to the hulless oats and wild rice.
4. Two hours before the levain is ready, mix the water with the flour on the lowest speed in the bowl of a stand mixer until all the flour has been hydrated. This took a couple of minutes. Autolyse for a couple of hours.
5. Once the levain is ready, add the salt, the yogurt, the add-ins and the levain to the bowl. Mix on one for a minute to integrate everything, mix on speed 2 for 5 minutes. This particular dough is quite wet and I wanted to develop the gluten but not over do it. Remove dough from bowl and place in a covered tub. Let rest 30 minutes. 
6. Do 4 sets of folds at 30 minute intervals, then switch to hourly folds for another 2 sets. 
7. Retard the bulk for 3 hours. The dough only rose about 10%. The cold really helped with handling this high hydration dough. 
8. Tip the dough out on a bare counter, sprinkle the top with flour and divide into portions of ~830 g. Round out the portions into rounds with a dough scraper and let rest one hour on the counter. 
9. Do a final shape by flouring the rounds and flipping the rounds over on a lightly floured counter. Gently stretch the dough out into a circle. Pull and fold the third of the dough closest to you over the middle. Pull the right side and fold over the middle and do the same to the left. Fold the top end to the center patting out any cavities. Finally stretch the two top corners and fold over each other in the middle. Roll the bottom of the dough away from you until the seam is underneath the dough. Cup your hands around the dough and pull towards you, doing this on all sides of the dough to round it off. Finally spin the dough to make a nice tight boule.
10. Sprinkle bran, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds and hemp hearts in the bannetons. Place the dough seam side down in the bannetons, cover, let rest for a few minutes on the counter and then put to bed in a cold (38F) fridge for 9-10 hours. 

Baking Day

1. The next morning, heat the oven to 475F with the Dutch ovens inside for 45 minutes to an hour. Turn out the dough seam side up onto a cornmeal sprinkled counter. Place rounds of parchment paper in the bottom of the pots, and carefully place the dough seam side up inside. This was quite the trick with such a wet dough. It practically folded in half in my hands as I was transferring the dough into the pots. I can’t imagine what it would have been like if I hadn’t retarded it!
2. Cover the pots and bake the loaves at 450 F for 30 minutes, remove the lids, and bake for another 25 minutes. Internal temperature should be 205F or more.

The oven spring was pretty decent considering how wet and floppy this dough turned out. I definitely have some learning to do to adapt  to using a mixer. 

Crumb shot to come later.