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We love challenges of all kinds and bread baking ones are no exception.  Anything, within reason, that one can do to learn something new, stretch limited understanding, gain new skills while having some fun at the same time, sounds good to my apprentice.

Top left are rolled oats, top right aresteel cut oats, bottom are whole oat groats.

Hanseata’s Challenge; of a tinned multigrain bead with sunflower seeds, was a great way to see what grains were hidden away in Lucy’s secret pantry.  I knew she didn’t have rolled spelt and barley or chestnut flour which proves even deep pantried, German baking apprentices have ingredient shortages like everyone else.

Look how chunky the autolyse ended up - even before the oat groat scald and sunflower seeds were added!

We went looking all over town for chestnut flour because we knew that we would never spend $10 a pound delivered for it over the Internet.  But the Chinese and Indian market came up wanting.   There are no Italian markets to be found around Gilbert, AZ either.

The fix was easy enough for Lucy, she just ground up a mix of Brazil, pecan, almond, walnuts and pistachio nuts as a replacement.  She subbed medium grind whole spelt for the rolled variety and subbed medium ground bulgar for the rolled barley.

Lucy couldn’t be outdone by a German baker she had never met, so she added some ground sesame seeds to the ground flax, some scalded whole oat groats, Toadies of course, and some left over prune water from the last bake.  She also decided to sub yeast water for the commercial yeast specified and use a bit of lard, 5 g for the fat instead of shortening.

Fill the pan half full adn let it sise in the middle to the rim of the pan and it starts to crack on top.  We didnlt dock.

What we wanted to make sure of is that we followed the list in order of weight and to use or limited knowledge of these kinds of breads to work out a formula that would make some sense to the woefully uniformed and totally lost like my apprentice and I.

We used all the whole spelt in the recipe for the levain and all of the liquid for it after the first stage build was YW.  The 3 stages were 4 hours each where the levain tripled at the end of the 3rd stage.  At that point we added the 10 g of whole rye to it, technically making a 4th stage and immediately retarded it in the fridge for 24 hours.  The levain ended up being almost 12% of the total weight but it was very active.

It is amazing how bread can become..................................Eggplant lasagna in the blink of an eye!

The levain rose 50% in the fridge and finished doubling in 2 hours on the counter the next morning while everything else but the salt, which was sprinkled on top, the huge amount of sunflower seeds and the oat groat scald was autolysing.  Normally we would do a minimum 4 hour autolyse for whole grains like this but we used 2 hours this time hoping for the best.

The whole grains came in at 85 % because the white whole wheat isn’t whole wheat at all.  The Toadies were note included in the whole grain calculation even though they are  the toasted; sifted out middling, bran and wheat germ that, when added back into the mix, makes up for 4 times as much weight as the toadies as whole grain.  By taking toadies into account, the whole grains would be 95%.

Once the autolyse and levain met up we did 6minutes of slap and folds to get the gluten going.  After a 10 minute rest we did another 4 minutes of slap and folds.  After another 10 minute rest, we did 2 minutes of slap and folds and then let the dough rest 15 minutes.  We then did 3 sets of S&F’s on 15 mine intervals where incorporated the sunflower seeds on the first on and the oat groat scald on the 2nd set.

A 30 minute bulk ferment followed the 3rd set of S&F’s before the dough was divided into (2) 500g pieces and shaped into batards to ft the cocktail loaf pans.  The tinned dough was allowed to proof on the counter before being retarded in the fridge for 24 hours.

The dough had doubled in the fridge and showed some cracks on top, a sure sign the dough was ready to be baked off.  We allowed the dough to come to room temperature over 1 1/2 hours on the counter.  The mini oven was fired up to 450 F and (2) of Sylvia’s steaming cups were placed inside after being heated to boiling in the micro wave.

The tinned bread was steamed at 450 F for 5 minutes and then the mini was turned down to 425 F for another 5 minutes.  The steam was then removed and the mini turned down to 375 F, convection this time.  The loaves continued to bake for another 10 minutes as we rotated the tins every 5 minutes.  At that point, we de-tinned the bread and continued to bake it for another 10 minutes.

When the bread hit 201 F we turned off the mini oven but let the bread stay in the mini oven until it hit 204 F when we removed it to a cooling rack.  Because of the low temperatures, we didn’t get the bold bake, spring or blisters of our other mini oven bakes but the bread did brown up to a medium brown and was very crunchy coming out of the oven,  All of these characteristics are nearly identical to our other bakes  of similar breads.

Lat night's dinner salad of kale, red leaf and romaine lettuce with nappa cabbage and feta cheese.  All the usual fixings too!

We also didn’t get the huge lengthwise split down the side of the loaf of the sample in Karin’s post and don’t know what we could have done to achieve that artistic baking flair of the original.  This bread smells great, even though there aren’t any aromatic seeds in it.

I think aromatic seeds would have been a fine addition and can’t believe my apprentice didn’t throw them in - even after I had Mini Oven’s seed mélange toasted and ready to go in this bread.  The Queen of Seeds, quite rightly, will be very disappointed in Lucy I’m sure - just like I am for this glaring omission.

A beautiful stuffed chicken breast with a tasty wine and butter suace.

This bake finished at noon yesterday and the loaves were wrapped when cooled to let the moisture redistribute. This morning the crust has gone soft, a good sign and we will cut it at the 24 hour mark to give it a taste.  Cutting is over and the bread is about the nuttiest and seediest bread Lucy has ever concocted and more than the example.  The dough more than doubled and the crumb is soft, moist and open.  There is purple tinge to the crumb from the walnuts no doubt.  It is delicious but not as dark as the original.

Very delicious indeed - unreal toasted.  I got some pate out of the freezer I was saving for a bread like this one and plan to add a variety of cheeses, fruits, and veggies to go with the pate and this fine bread for lunch.  Yummy!

Thanks Karin for the idea of this challenge bake!   So much fun and tasty to boot ...... even though it ended up not very close to the original example.

Sunbursts right before sunset on retard day.

Formula

Lunch on retard day. 

Wow is this EVER a TASTY loaf!!!  I proofed this in a plastic bowl lined with fine linen.  I only used 1 layer of linen and when removed from the proofing container the linen was wet and clinging to the dough.  I used enough rice flour that it removed well and didn't damage the dough, but the seam never opened and there is a large nose blister on the right and some holes where the baker sleeps on top.  Note to self:  for these wet breads at least 2 layers of linen in the bowl and perhaps 4.

Baked this in the covered DO for 30 minutes @ 475F and the full 20 @ temp with convection off and turning every 5. 

In his book Ken mentions he sells this bread to restaurants who pair this with cheeses.  He also mentions it is tasty toasted with honey.  TOTALLY RIGHT on both of those calls.  Lunch today was a lightly toasted, (still warm from the oven!) buttered slab with old cheddar melted and buttered with honey for dessert. Very yummy stuff.  No photos of lunch, but here is a crumb shot:

The volume I am getting on HALF of a Forkish recipe is such that I will either have to go to 1/3 of his formulas or get a longer bread knife. My 8" Henckels was barely able to slice this beast of a loaf.  I followed this recipe to the letter and it makes mighty fine tasting bread.

I had enough starter left over to make a 1/3 overnight levain pizza dough which was mixed yesterday and bakes for dinner tonight.

Well so far a BIG tip of the hat to Ken Forkish for an excellent and compelling book -- particularly for 'sourdough' or levain bakers as he likes to call it. I really like the idea of being able to change the flavour profiles of your bread by manipulating the hydration and other aspects of your starter. Very cool stuff indeed to this old ski bum.

OK, so for all my dedicated fans, of which I'm sure are numerous, I apologize for my negligence in updates. You might have though I was outta the game forever, but you were so wrong. That is to say, I have recently concocted some delish-ass bread. The inspiration came from my long time friend and college Armun Liaghat, to whom this loaf is dedicated. Enough with the babble lets dabble.

This is a 25% Whole Dark Rye, 75% white loaf. I used some of that chronic Red's Mill Whole Dark as night Rye and some regular Trader Joe's AP. I also added about a cup of flax seeds. Usually, I DGAF about a bread flour, but this time it ended up biting me in the ass (more on that later). I made about a cup of preferment with rye flour, a little water, and finished up the hydration with my all time favorite beer.

Yes that's right. It's not from Michigan, it's not an IPA, it's California Ale. Side Note to all the beer snobs: check it out. At this point, my starter was looking like some chunky diarrhea. Let that sit for 24 hours feeding every 8. Then I mixed up my dough, autolyse, and blah blah blah. Bang! Super dank loaf.

Well, almost...

While the crumb is acceptable as a sandwich bread, it was not at all what I was aiming for. With the hearty pre-ferment, I was hoping for large gelatinous bubbles, but instead got what amounted to the crumb of under kneaded WW:

I will try the guy again, only with two differences. I will substitute in bread flour, and add a ~24 hour retarded fermentation in darkest corner of my fridge.

So I ask my devoted readers; Do you think this aught to help my crumb? And with that, I say goodbye from Doughboy Fresh and stay crispy.

I just stumbled across a PDF scan of a book some here might be interested in. It is "Parsons Bread Book" and it self-describes as

A celebration of the art of baking bread and the great bakers of New York City by students at Parsons School of Design

It looks like a good read:-)

http://www.publiccollectors.org/ParsonsBreadBook.pdf

-sig