Wheat Levain and Kamut Boules Baked in the Wood-fired Oven
Wheat Levain and Kamut Boules Baked in the Wood-fired Oven
Last Monday and Tuesday Alison and I were joined by my family who came up to help with a number of projects we have on the go just now. Many thanks to my Mum and Dad and Brother and Sister-in-Law, for all their help. The initial project which dragged them up from northern and eastern corners of Yorkshire to the far north of England was to try to make some improvements to the firing efficiency of my wood-fired oven. My family have watched and supported me from afar in my summer baking antics, and I believe my brother’s offer to try to improve the potential of the oven was an offer of genuine enthusiasm to help me expand my own baking activities in the longer term.
Whilst the rest of us slaved away inside, Dave dismantled the chimney section of the oven, modified the design and then re-built it. We built a small fire on the second afternoon to verify that things had improved; they had!
After my first 3 day stint in Leeds and a lovely Saturday evening entertaining friends at home with a lovely South Indian Fish Curry, I had some time to fire up the oven properly over 2 days, and bake bread in it.
I fired the oven gently on Sunday, then somewhat harder today in the gales resulting from an always unwanted hurricane emanating from the US and blasting over from the Atlantic. The chimney seemed none-too-stable, but the fire roared nicely in the end.
My leavens had been a little neglected, so it was a good time to spend re-building their strength too. I have a number of different speciality flours in the store cupboard at the moment, some in just very small amounts; others I held slightly more of. These were left over from the TFL baking course at Newcastle College which ran near the end of July, just before my escape.
I decided to make some bread using the half kilo of Kamut flour I had in stock. Andrew Whitley (2006; pp.87) explains that it is
“Considered to be an ancient relative of durum wheat, Kamut is the registered tradename for a cereal derived from 36 grains mailed by an American airman in Egypt to his father in Montana in the 1950s. Its production is always organic and is controlled by the Quinn family. Kamut is generally higher in protein than wheat but with poorer-quality gluten.”
I used a flour mix consisting of 30% Kamut, 20% Gilchesters’ Pizza/Ciabatta flour and 50% Carrs Special CC Bread Flour. The leaven was made with the bread flour, and the amount of pre-fermented flour was 20%. I suspect this was a trifle too low. I began with 50g of stock levain which was built to 530g over 14 hours and 2 refreshments. Hydration was in excess of 71%.
Here is the formula, recipe and method:
Material | Formula [% of flour] | Recipe [grams] |
1. Levain; 2 refreshments |
|
|
TOTAL | 32 [flour 20, water 12] | 512 [flour 320, water 192] |
|
|
|
2. Final Dough |
|
|
Levain | 32 [flour 20, water 12] | 512 [flour 320, water 192] |
Gilchesters’ Pizza Flour | 20 | 320 |
Carrs Special CC Flour | 30 | 480 |
Doves Farm Organic Kamut Flour | 30 | 480 |
Salt | 1.75 | 28 |
Organic Salted Butter | 1 | 16 |
Water | 59.38 | 950 |
TOTAL | 174.13 | 2786 |
% pre-fermented flour | 20 | - |
% overall hydration | 71.38 | - |
FACTOR | 16 | - |
Method:
- Mix the flours for the final dough with the final water required, and autolyse for one hour.
- Combine the autolyse with the levain, salt and butter and mix gently to a dough. Develop by hand-mixing a further 10 minutes.
- Bulk proof the dough covered for 5 hours [leaven portion too low!], with one S&F after 1½ hours and another after 3½ hours.
- Scale and divide into 2 x 1.04 kg pieces and one piece just over 700g. Mould round and place upside down in prepared bannetons.
- Final proof, covered for 3½ hours
- Tip each loaf gently out of the banneton onto the peel, cut and bake in the wood-fired oven for 50 minutes.
- Note that I used a wet tea towel to line the oven door as a source of steam; this was primitive, but worked surprisingly well.
- Cool on wires after taking photographs. Cut the loaf open far too early under temptation and enjoy a slice splattered with butter well before you really should!
These were very tasty loaves indeed!! Oven spring was good, although the dough had been a trifle slow to prove all day. Here are the photographs; not perfect, but the oven is well on the way to being able to perform how I always hoped it would.
So, all in all, a good few steps forward.
Codruta asked me about the “factor” in the table on the last post and I forgot to answer; sorry Codruta! The factor is the number that is used as a multiplier to move from formula to recipe. In this case, it is 16; so the total flour is 1600g, from 100%.
Best wishes to all
Andy