Blog posts

Background

My first attempts at this bread were flawed in that I got very little rise. Debra Wink (DW) contacted me and suggested some tweaks. As a result, I introduced some Vital Wheat Gluten (VWG) to increase the protein percent of my whole-wheat flour. I also pre-fermented 5 percent of the flour in a stiff levain. I wasn’t sure what effect the levain would have; rise, flavour enhancement, crumb or all. I’ve had a great result by incorporating both the VWG and the levain now for many weeks.

Today’s Experiment

To learn more about concentrated lactic acid sourdough (CLAS), please see here and here. 

I detailed the first bake with this recipe here.  I wanted to revisit it without the matcha powder and see how it worked as a hearth loaf.

I have never had much luck making crumpets. I came across this recipe elsewhere,and decided to give it a try. Success at last!! There used to be 8 (I scaled the recipe down a tad), but two were eaten hot off the pan. The rest have cooled and are frozen.

A few notes of possible interest:

This was an experiment with walnuts and some purple barley that I had on hand.  I modified my everyday loaf to incorporate the nuts and soaked barley during lamination (after an initial 2 S&Fs).  Although I nearly let the fermentation get away from me while busy cooking dinner last night, I'm happy with the crumb all things considered, not the least of which was the weight of the walnuts.  The areas of the crumb that have more purple are actually from the barley and not the walnuts (since those got toasted first).  The flavor is really nice and the crumb is quit

It was time to revisit this one after taking a break for the holidays. 

Recipe

Makes 3 loaves 

150 g Spelt flour (~150 g Spelt berries)

150 g Kamut flour (~150 g Kamut berries)

50 g rye flour (~50 g Rye berries)

700 g strong bakers unbleached flour

725 g of filtered water 

10 g Old Bay seasoning

15 g Pink Himalayan salt 

30 g yogurt 

250 g levain (procedure is in recipe and will need additional wholewheat flour and unbleached flour)

Add-ins

Still working my way through my 2 kg bag of stoneground organic spelt and hoping that I’ll figure this ancient grain out eventually.  I wanted to try again at using only spelt for a Hokkaido milk bread.  My first attempt was tasty but a bit squat for my liking.  Thinking that the gluten net just wasn’t strong enough to retain the pressure of the expanding gases during baking I though that I could improve the bake by increasing the VWG in this recipe.  I also increased the tangzhong to 5% and increased the milk.  

I’ve not made a porridge yet to add to any 100% whole grain bread so thought it was high time to try.  I have a bag of the new Harvest Flakes from Anita’s Organic Mill that they sent me to try out.