Flaked Kamut and Spelt Porridge Bread with Toasted Sesame Seeds
I haven’t baked for the last couple of weekends because I was in Antigua for my niece’s wedding. It was my first time in the Caribbean and it was fabulous. Great resort, great food and fantastic weather. It sure beats what we have been having here.
I am continuing baking breads inspired by CedarMountains recipes from a couple of years ago. This one is very similar but not exactly like his.
Recipe
Makes 3 loaves
Main dough:
100 g Kamut berries
100 g Spelt berries
100 g Red Fife berries
110 g Rye berries
700 g unbleached flour
50 g flax seeds
15 g white sesame seeds
750 g water
22 g pink Himalayan salt
220 g 100% hydration bran/rye flour levain (procedure is in recipe)
Porridge:
45 g kamut flakes
45 g spelt flakes
180 g water
30 g full fat plain yogurt
A few days before:
- Revive your starter by feeding it regularly. Ensure that you have 45 g to inoculate the levain.
The night before:
- Mill all the grains separately and sift out the bran. I ended up with 58 g of bran from all of the grains. You need a total of 95 g of bran/high extraction rye flour for the levain. My mix ended up being 58 g of bran and 37 g of the rye flour. Adjust as necessary to get the required 95 g. Place the remainder of the rye flour with the other flours (including the unbleached flour) in a bowl or bucket.
- Grind the flax seeds (I do this in a bullet) and add to the mix of flours.
- Toast the sesame seeds in a dry frying ban until lightly golden, let cool and grind to a powder. I used the bullet for this as well. Add to the mix of flours and ground flax.
- Make the porridge using all the ingredients listed and cook until the flakes are tender. Cover and let cool overnight.
- Before going to bed, take 45 g of your starter and add all of the reserved bran/high extraction flour mix and 95 of filtered water. This makes a bit more than 220 g of levain. The extra is to account for what you can’t scrape out of the container. Mix well and let rise overnight. Mine only rose 1.5 times but that is to be expected when there is that much bran in the levain. There were lots of bubbles though throughout.
Main dough:
- Pour 750 g of water into the porridge and loosen the mix.
- Add this to the flour mixture and mix well. Autolyse the mix for a couple of hours with the salt on top. The dough smelled like peanut butter! It is amazing that grinding sesame seeds can make such an impact on the aroma even though it is a very small amount.
- Add the levain and mix well. Do 50 in bucket folds to ensure that gluten development is well on its way. Cover and place the dough in a warm spot to rise.
- Do sets of stretches and folds about 30-45 minutes apart for the first 3 sets then go to hourly folds for the remainder span of bulk fermentation. The dough felt great right from the first set of stretches and folds. Bulk fermentation took 4 hours and the dough rose about 40%.
- Wet the sides of the dough with your hand to loosen from the bucket, and dump out onto a bare counter. Lightly flour the top of the dough again and divide into 3 equal portions of about 790 g. Pre-round the portions with a wet scraper. I let my hands wet to prevent the dough from sticking while weighing it and moving it around. This actually worked well.
- Let rest for 30-40 minutes and then shape into a fairly tight boule. The dough didn’t want to form a tight skin so I didn’t get the boules as tight as I wanted. The few I got fairly tight were beginning to tear so I did what I could. Place seam side down in rice/AP floured bannetons, cover, and put to bed in a very cold fridge for the night.
Baking day:
- The next morning, heat the oven to 475 F with the dutch ovens inside for at least 45 minutes. Place rounds of parchment paper in the bottom of the pots and gently place the dough seam side up inside.
- Cover the pots and bake the loaves at 450 F for 25 minutes, remove the lids, drop the temperature to 425 F and bake for another 22 minutes. By the way, I use convection mode right through the bake to prevent hot spots. This also helps with getting that nice dark golden colour.
The oven spring wasn’t huge. Satisfactory, but it could have been a tad better. I suspect it was due to my shaping issues. I wonder if my use of water during shaping weakened the surface of the boules and I should stick to using only flour at that point.