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Baked 2 loaves this week. Leader's Pain au Levain my staple plain bread and Hamelman's rye multigrain.

No pictures of the entire loaf of the Pain au Levain this time round but here's the crumb shot.

Well, it's been a while (about two years I think) since I last posted to my blog.  Lots of irrelevant reasons for that, but last night's bake from the first edition of Jeffrey Hamelman's book BREAD inspired me to return.  Time will tell if I can keep it up.

Lucy figured it was time to get back to baking the kind of bread that she likes but I reminded her we still have a couple of half loaves of SD pumpernickel in the freezer along with some white breads and who knows what else.

This dough was mixed in a KA K5SS stand mixer equipped with a replacement spiral hook for a KA 6 quart mixer. The preparatory sour was mixed by hand. This batch used 15 ounces (425g) of flour, yielding a 24 ounce (680g) boule.

Formula:

Preparatory Sour:

  6 2/3%     Dark Rye Flour

13 1/3%     Water

   0.12%     Instant Yeast

Time:24 hours    Temperature: 76°F (24°C)

Dough:

66 2/3%     Bread Flour

Here a preview of my new bread. It has the exact same ingredients (As to flour, water, salt, spices) as my previous bread (Adrian's rustic whole rye bread with some spelt). But this time I used a different way of fermentation!

The sourdough leaven was 750g at 100% hydration, fermented for 16 hours. Compared to what I later added (390g of flour) it is a lot and the bread should have a stronger taste than last time.

I currently proof wholemeal sd loaves (approx weight 900gms) for between 4 and 6 hours in warm kitchen (22 degrees). What can I do to accelerate this slightly ? I look forward to hearing thoughts. 

With thanks

A basic white bread with the addition of onion, garlic, cheese, green chili and bacon. An excellent breakfast bread when serving egg based dishes.

This bread was mixed in a KitchenAid "Ultra Power" stand mixer, instead of the K5SS equipped with a spiral hook (my preferred mixer). In addition, the absorption was low, making mixing difficult. Even so, after about 12 minutes of re-mixing at fairly high speed, the dough began to soften. Dough temperature dropped from 81° F to 79° F (probably due to convection cooling). The motor housing surface temperature had reached 102° F, which convinced me that it was a good time to cease re-mixing. It took 90 minutes for the loaf to rise to the proper height for baking.

I just took this out of the oven, and hoping that

when we cut it for lunch I will see excellent crumb.  I was pleased that there was good oven spring on this one, so I do have my hopes up.  I experimented a bit on this loaf and used more white flour than wheat, as was called for in the recipe.  I also made enough for two loaves, so I froze this dough.

Here is my morning experiment... 85% hydration organic whole wheat/rye with soaked steel cut oats added in. I was pretty pleased with how they came out. I keep trying to get maximum flavor out of my sourdough... weaning myself off store bought AP flour! This dough smelled great as I mixed it.... and the oats (soaked overnight) gave the finished bread another layer of flavor and texture. I gave the dough a 3 hour bulk rise, then shaped it and gave it an overnight 8 hour rise in the fridge, with 1 more hour at room temp before baking.