ll433's blog

I asked the husband for a bread challenge yesterday and he said why not make an airy and not dense free-form 100% ancient grain loaf?

I thought I might as well take the opportunity to conduct some experiments regarding hydration levels of levains, pH levels and resulting crumb/taste. Since I didn't have enough emmer left, I went with einkorn. (Forgot I had an unopened bag of Khorasan in the cabinet - damn! Next time.)

I began last night by making three different levains.

I first had these spinach pies (or pita, as it's called there) when hiking near Ljuboten a couple of years back. A very old lady invited us to her hut for a pita made with nettles and cheese. That was the best pie I've ever eaten. Since then, I've tried to replicate it at home with spinach (no success with Belgian nettles - tasted very grassy).

The pie uses a dough that is just a little thicker than phyllo. 

Dough for one pie

It might seem somewhat incredulous that there would be yet another bachelor party bake within two weeks of the previous one, but yes - seems many men in our circle are getting married. 

This was a somewhat small party of 5 men, so I produced but 2 durum semolina matera-type loaves and 2 five-grain five seed/nut loaves. These went down very well, with the semolinas being the clear preference.

This was hectic. Baked 12 loaves (2 of each type) and 3.5kg of granola for the bachelor's party that the husband was organizing. Prepped the levains all in the morning before I left for work (cycled to the train station in record time), and started mixing dough the moment I was home at 8 pm. Was done baking 10 loaves at 3:30 am, and then had to bake the oat loaves at 8 am as they need a much longer rise.

Loaf is exceptionally tasty. Really deep flavour with very little sourness, excellent complex crust. Smoky, earthy and smooth. Definitely my best rye bread so far.

I wanted to try making a 60% rye (whole and medium 50/50) that was flavourful, not too sour, and had most of the rye in the pre-ferment so that the grains were more broken down (for flavour, but also digestibility), and BF and proof would be relatively fast, about 5 hours or so, with some sort of rise in the oven. 

I was pleasantly surprised by this loaf. This is a 40% whole einkorn loaf, hydration 70%, with some barley malt syrup mixed in and poppy seeds on the crust. All the einkorn is in the overnight levain. The high PFF makes this a fast bread to bake on the same day as mixing - I mixed it at 8:30 am, baked it at 12:30, and (don't frown) ate it at 2 pm with carrot lentil soup.

A friend recently asked if I could try making some semolina loaves. He missed them after his vacation in Italy and sent me references to the Matera bread.

After reading a couple of posts here, I ventured on my first loaf.

First loaf - Complete failure

I started off with what seemed to be a standard recipe. 500g semola rimacinata, 100g 70% hydration starter, 350g water, 1.5% salt.

BF took 7 hours without dough degradation but also without much gluten development. I did a final proof of about an hour and then shaped it before putting it into the oven.

This is a follow-up to Precaud's interesting post on enhancing oatiness. And my, what a journey. I love my oats, and have lots of experience making them for granola, incorporating a portion into my bread and so forth, but at a high percentage, oats do very funny things. 

I had a bread party in the office a few days ago and brought three breads:

I'm making three loaves for the office bread party next week, and in addition to the 40% rye and 60% spelt, I thought I will bring this...decadent loaf.