100 % Whole Grain Kamut With 14 % Sprouted
More than 2 years ago Lucy and I baked out first 100% Kamut Bread that was at 102% hydration. Back then we weren't using straight rice flour in out baskets and the dough stuck causing a nasty disfigurement here:
The bread tasted fine and the crumb was fairly open due to the YW and SD combo levain we used. We also ground the whole berries in a Krup’s coffee grinder since we didn’t have a grain mill till much later. We thought we would give it another go to try to fix some of these earlier problems.
Lucy decide to add a small amount of whole grain Kamut sprouted flour to the mix this time and to only use a Kamut SD levain leaving the YW out which I thought would be a mistake since YW really opens up the crumb of whole grain breads so well. She didn’t want the YW to cancel at the sour as it does when mixed in the SD levain.
The sprouted Kamut was soaked for 4 hours then drained and sprouted for 24 hours in a sprouter before being paper towel dried and then air dried in the Arizona sun over 4 hours to make sure the enzymes we released were not harmed by high heat.
We did our usual 3 stage levain build where we used the 15% extracted hard bits of the milled Kamut to get the levain up to speed. We did not use any sprouted flour hard bits for the levain but we did put the sprouted flour into the autolyse with the 85% extraction of the non sprouted Kamut.
Since the sprouted grain went into the autolyse we limited it to 1/2 hour so it wouldn’t spike the autolyse into enzymatic overload. Then the levain and the salt were added before a short mix with a spoon and 8 minutes of slap and folds. During the slap and folds we adjusted the final dough water with small additions to fit the final mix feel as it was slapped around without learning a lesson.
We ended up at around 90% hydration which was 12% lower than the bake 2 years ago. We think the sprouted flour was the difference plus we wanted a less wet mix since we planned on an 18 hour retard instead of 12 hours. After a 30 minute rest we did 3 sets of stretch and folds from the compass points on 30 minute intervals to finish off the gluten development.
This got us to the 2 hour mark since mixing and we let the dough rest for 10 minutes before shaping into a squat oval, putting it a basket, bagging it and putting it in the fridge for long cold retard.
18 hours later it had proof sufficiently to warm up on the counter as Big Old Betsy was heated to ramming speed of 550 F when the Mega Steam went in for 15 minutes before the dough was un-molded onto parchment on a peel, slashed and slid onto the bottom stone for 15 minutes of steam. Once the steam came out the oven was turned down to 425 F or another 10 minutes of baking until the inside hit 210 F – our new standard temperature for sprouted flour bread.
The thing to remember about Kamut is that it has a pretty good protein percent but it is very extensible and not very elastic. The protein gluten isn’t the kind one would normally pick for bread that wasn’t going to be panned up when over 80% hydration like this one at 87.5%. This dough was slack but it didn’t stick to the basket this time.
We expected it to spread after it was un-molded due to the grain used and the sprouts too. but it did try to puff itself up some in the heat of the oven and did bloom a bit. The crust came out that beautiful orange tinged color that a durum derivative grain is so famous for. It came out of the oven crispy but it went soft as it cooled.
The yellow crumb also associated with durum was the other striking feature. The crumb was open for 100% whole grain bread. It was soft and very moist due to the sprouts. The best part was the taste though. Nothing tastes as sweet as Kamut and the sprouts made is taste like it has a bit of sweet cornbread in it – maybe that was the color affecting my tongueJ
This is one fine bread and if you want it to look like a majestic tall loaf, just pan it up instead but….you will miss the higher percent of tasty crust with a boule.
Whole KamutSD Levain | Build 1 | Build 2 | Build 3 | Total | % |
9 Week Retarded Rye Starter | 6 | 0 | 0 | 6 | 1.39% |
85% Extraction Kamut | 0 | 0 | 24 | 24 | 5.57% |
15% Extraction Kamut | 6 | 12 | 0 | 18 | 4.18% |
Water | 6 | 12 | 0 | 18 | 4.18% |
Total | 18 | 24 | 24 | 66 | 15.31% |
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Levain Totals |
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Flour | 45 | 10.44% |
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Water | 21 | 4.87% |
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Levain Hydration | 46.67% |
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Levain % of Total Flour | 10.44% |
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Dough Flour |
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85% Extraction Kamut | 326 | 75.64% |
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100% Whole Sprouted Kamut | 60 | 13.92% |
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Total Dough Flour | 386 | 89.56% |
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Salt | 8 | 1.86% |
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Water | 332 | 77.03% |
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Dough Hydration | 86.01% |
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Total Flour w/ Starter | 431 |
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Liquid w/ Starter | 353 |
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Hydration with Starter | 87.47% |
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Total Weight | 816 |
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% Whole Kamut | 100.00% |
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% Whole Sprouted Kamut | 13.92% |
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