100% einkorn honey bread
Hello,
Here is today's bake, a 100% whole einkorn flour (unsifted, milled at home), and honey. This was my third attempt at a 100% einkorn bread. My first attempt, I used no honey, used liquid levain, and cold-fermented the final dough for 24hrs. Way, way too sour. Then I got a request for a strong honey bread from a family member. So, I tried again with a decent amount of honey (10% by weight of flour) and no long cold ferment. I wasn't sure how to account for the hydration of the honey. I did search here but I didn't find much (my search skills may be lacking). Then I read the wikipedia article on Honey, and it specified that your typical honey is about 17% water. So I factored that value into the hydration of the recipe. *laugh*. That attempt was far too underestimated for hydration content of honey. It might be true, that honey is 17% water but not for the purposes of hydrating flour. That 2nd attempt was the gloopiest, stickiest, most unmanageable dough ever. It felt and handled more like a 78% or higher hydration. I baked it anyway and it was a nice frisbee. Unfortunately, it was also too sour, and I did everything at ambient room temps.
So, for this third attempt, I used 75% as my honey-hydration estimate, and lowered the hydration of my levain to 80% instead of 100% or 125% to see if it would reduce sour at all. 20% of the flour was mashed also. So a lot of honey and a lot of mash. The dough felt and handled about right in terms of overall hydration, and not too sour this time. Just a little finishing tang. Yay! It tastes very good. Will go best as a breakfast bread or a PB+J sandwich.
My scoring was a little off-center, but oh well. :) I wasn't expecting an open crumb, and so I was not disappointed when I found it wasn't.
Recipe and pics. All weights in grams, all flour is whole einkorn flour.
Total Dough Weight: 1000
Targeted Total Dough Hydration: 70%
Total Dough Flour Weight: 588
Targeted Total Dough Water Weight: 412
Percentages:
Levain Percentage: 20%
Levain Hydration: 80%
Starter Percentage: 10% of levain
Starter Hydration: 125%
Soaker Percentage: 58%
Soaker Hydration: 80%
Soaker Salt Percentage: 1%
Mash Percentage: 35% of soaker
Mash Hydration: 200%
Final Dough Salt Percentage: 1.5%
Honey Percentage: 10%
Levain:
Flour Weight: 112
Water Weight: 87
Starter Weight: 12
Mash:
Flour Weight: 119
Water Weight: 238
Diatastic Malt Powder: 2
Soaker:
All Mash
Flour Weight: 222
Water Weight: 35
Salt Weight: 3
Final Dough:
All Levain
All Soaker/Mash
Flour Weight: 130
Salt Weight: 6
Honey Weight: 59 (estimated @ 75% hydration)
Happy baking!