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Sometimes the hardest part of baking bread is being there.   Yesterday I meant to get to making a semolina bread (p. 135 of Hamelman's Bread) but I didn't quite get to it until later in the afternoon.   Then when it was finishing up the first rise, my son wanted me to take him out, so I delayed him until I could get the bread shaped, and then we went out to eat.   By the time we got back (only an hour later) the bread was ready to go into the oven,  but the oven wasn't preheated.   I didn't want to let the bread get overproofed, nor did I want to put it into a cold oven, so I did a little of both.   I preheated the oven for 10 minutes, and in it went.   The result - a little bit of oven spring, and an underdone bottom crust.   What would you have done under the circumstances?  And this is not a rhetorical question.

Horst Bandel's Black Pumpernickel.

This is a recipe from "Bread: A Baker's Book of Techniques and Recipes" by Jeffrey Hamelman.   A number of TFL regulars have posted on this recipe, notably,

ehanner: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/16501/learning-pumpernickel and http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/16348/horst-bandel039s-black-pumpernickel-bread

 txfarmer: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/13965/still-struggling-horst-bandel%E2%80%99s-black-pumpernickel and http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/14315/horst-bandel%E2%80%99s-black-pumpernickel-finally

and Shiao-Ping: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/12790/horst-bandel039s-black-pumpernickel

This is the recipe and formula I adapted and used

Notes:

The 100% of "flour" is made up of: dark rye in the sour, whole rye berries in the first soaker, plus the cracked rye and the flour in the final dough.   I have not counted the old bread, as that seemed too arbitrary to sub divide accurately into water and flour.

The total water content does include the water in the old bread soaker, as well as the water taken up by cooking the rye berries.   My aim was to establish a formula which accurately created an overall moisture content of 85% of the "flour".

Obviously there will be some variation from batch to batch, but I really wanted to establish how much liquid is taken up in the bread soaker, and in the berry soaking and boiling process.   From seeing other peoples' postings, I had decided this information was crucial.

For what it's worth, the pre-fermented part is 30%.

Method:

• Prepare the rye sour dough using starter from stock.   Allow the sour dough to ferment for 14 - 16 hours at 21°C.
• Soak the rye berries overnight in cold water.
• Soak the old bread overnight in ambient water.   Use the amounts given in the above table - weighed.   The bread will take up all this water, so you can eliminate any problems of squeezing!   I used some wholewheat pain siègle, and some white bread.   This was deliberate, as I did not have any high gluten white flour in stock, so had to change the flour used in the final dough, using more dark rye plus a dash of wholemeal.   It was all I had at the time!
• Next day, cook the rye berries in fresh boiling water [3 times volume of water to berries] for about an hour.   Drain the berries, and discard the cooking liquor.   At this point I weighed the berries to establish exactly how much water they had taken up.   This is the figure shown in the table.
• For the final dough, dissolve the molasses into the water, which should be 40°C.   From there, mix all the ingredients together with the soakers and sour to form an evenly mixed paste.   It was cold in the house when I made this, so both the sour and flour, plus the soaked bread were all well below 20°C    The final dough temperature was 28°C.   Photographs of the mixed paste are shown below.
• Bulk ferment for 45 minutes.   Meantime lightly grease 1 large Pullman pan and lid.   Pre-heat the oven to 190°C.
• Use wet hands to scrape up and shape the paste, and deposit it into the tin.   Smooth the surface as necessary.   Cover with an oiled piece of plastic, and prove at 32°C for 1¼ hours.   I use the hearth in front of our wood burning stove.   When the dough is just short of the top of the tin, slide the lid in place, and set in the oven.


• The baking process is long and complex.   The idea is the loaf should be baked in a falling oven.   For the home baker, this is really difficult to achieve.   I turned the heat down to 120°C after 1½ hours.   After a further 6 hours I turned the oven off.   Then I left the bread in the cooling oven overnight.   This was the best equivalent I could come up with to the recommendations in the book.
• De-pan the bread and cool on wires.   Wrap in a tea towel, and let the bread sit a full 24 hours before giving into temptation and cutting off that first slice.

Analysis:

• I'm pleased with how this loaf came out in some ways.   For a start Alison, my wife, has been raving about her sandwiches I make for lunch...all week.   I made this bread a week ago now, and didn't cut into it for nearly 2 days.   It served us for lunch sandwiches Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.   There is a little left for today, and it's still almost as moist in the middle of the crumb as when first cut.
• I like the formula, and am happy with the hydration calculations.   I've attached a couple of photos of the mixed paste to try and show the texture, although I accept they are not the best of shots, I hope it gives an idea.
• I know Eric added too much flour, and commented on the adverse effect in the eating.   Well, I didn't have any high gluten flour in the house when I made this.   I had a tiny amount of strong wholemeal, and some dark rye!!!   That's why I went with lighter bread in the soaker.   This has definitely made a difference to the finished bread.   It is quite difficult to cut through cleanly without the dough trying to tear a little in places.   You can also spot the giveaway hole just underneath the top crust near the middle of the loaf.   It was the plague of some of the VB rye loaves, and is caused by the weakness in the structure of the starch as the final fermentation draws to conclusion.   This is clearly the typical instability from rye as opposed to the stretchy gluten in the wheat.   Still, the flavour does not detract.
• My main disappointment, however, is in the baking.   The outer portions of the crumb are over-baked, and the crust is too firm.   But the middle of the crumb is very moist [I had thought about writing overly-moist here, but that's not right; the bread is baked through, and was fine once it had stood before cutting]   I'm thinking the major issue with such a large loaf [it's just over the 2kg mark], with such high hydration [85%] is to be able to "cook" it properly.   I think I set the bread at too high a temperature in the first place.   I've been with Eric all the way on the idea of steaming.   Eric, could you give me the link to the discussion you had with qahtan regarding steaming?   Baking seems a very difficult way to deal with this bread.   It takes me back to producing 000s of Christmas Puddings at the Village Bakery.   We loaded them into wire baskets in their plastic pots, covered with foil lids.   We lowered the wires into coffins made of aluminium.   These were the same size as a standard baking sheet, and would be about 40cm tall, so they filled the height of our oven.   The coffins had water in the bottom, and a raised platform with 3 big holes in, for the wires to sit on.   They also had tight-fitting lids.   They weighed a lot and were really difficult to control with the peel.   Our peels had handles which were 5m in length!   So, the puddings sat at the back of the cooling wood-fired oven for several hours and cooked beautifully in the steam.   I want to devise a similar sort of system to cook the Horst Bandel loaf.   But this is not that easy.   As you can see in the photos, I've made some in the Christmas pudding pots, and this was very successful.   But I love the shape and size of loaf gained from using the Pullman pan.   I want to find a large enclosed vessel which will hold a Pullman pan, and can take a layer of water on the bottom.   I figure some sort of raised wire racking will support the Pullman pan and keep it above the water level.   Anyway, I need to do some work to come up with something along those lines.   I envisage steaming time in the region of 10 - 12 hours.   I do like those glass pans, Eric!
• I used cracked rye grain instead of rye chops.   I have 2 suppliers for organic rye: one had wholegrain, flour and cracked grain.   The other had chops and flour, but no wholegrain; the explanation was that the grain was tipped straight into the mill on delivery, hence they could not supply wholegrain.   I think this must be a Health and Safety issue, but I found it a little unhelpful, so I went with the other supplier, and the cracked grain option.   I don't think the substitution was that significant.   The whole rye berries need a minimum of 1 hour boil.

I'm going to count this as my first recipe in the "Bread Challenge".   To those already signed up, I hope you all think it worthy.

 Lots of photos all shown below.   The top 2 on the left were steamed in pudding pots.   The next 2 are of the mixed paste.   Then 5 of the finished loaf baked in the pullman pan.

Best wishes

Andy

I baked German Five-Kern Bread from Peter Reinhart's "Crust & Crumb" a few weeks back. This has turned out to be one of my favorite breads and I wish I had discovered it sooner. The Five-Kern is made from coarse dark rye flour (20.26% - I used NYBakers Dark Rye), bread flour (KA), cooked brown rice, polenta, oats, flax seeds and honey. And water and salt, of course. I guess I turned it into a Six-Kern bread with the poppy seed embellishment.

I followed Peter's book closely, but do not feel comfortable posting his commercial formula. It does involve building a rye sponge followed by a firm rye starter over the course of a couple of days. The flavor was incredible, particularly the crust, and the crumb was much lighter than I expected. An enticing aroma filled the house during the bake.

Even with the 2 stage elaboration, the amount of pre-fermented flour was only 15.19%. The final dough hydration was 63.80%, but the crumb of the finished loaves seemed moister than that.

Submitted to YeastSpotting

For years I have always made Hot Cross Buns for Easter and leaving the cross off enjoy them year round.  This is the first time I have made them with buttermilk.  Using buttermilk in baking is one of my all time favorite ingredients. The flavor was delicious with a wonderful crumb.  Just what I had hoped for and the recipe is very convenient because you can prepare it the night before and bake the buns up fresh in morning!  The recipe is at http://www.cookingbread.com/  I made these changes in the ingredients and also did a mix with a 25 minute rest and then kneaded to just all the ingredients came together and a gluten formation was just beginning.   I added 1/2 tsp. cloves, golden raisins instead of the cranberries, lemon and orange candied peel, bakers sugar, Golden ISYeast, KAAP and adjusting the hydration, the dough was still tacky before shaping.  Next time I will leave off the flour/sugar crosses as we prefer the sugar glazed crosses.  These are now my favorite HCB.

                                                            My 15 inch deep dish pizza pan filled with large HCB

                                        Sylvia