The Fresh Loaf

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Wheat Sheaf shaped loaf

Cellarvie's picture
Cellarvie

Wheat Sheaf shaped loaf

I'm planning on making a wheat sheaf shaped loaf for a family festival.  I've never made one before so yes, this might be a tad over ambitious.  Anybody any experience to share? 

Abe's picture
Abe

I've seen many stenciled on wheat sheaves but haven't seen breads in an actual wheat sheave shape. Would stenciling suffice?  

Benito's picture
Benito

Are you talking about an epi?  So you’d need to shape a baguette, then cut the baguette on an angle fairly deeply then flip the cut piece in alternating directions.  I’ve seen these but never tried doing one.  I’ve read it is a good idea to flour your scissors prior to eat cut.

Benny

Abe's picture
Abe

Of course! From the description was thinking of whole wheat sheave. 

Rock's picture
Rock

I tried it a couple of Thanksgivings ago with mixed results.

Probably the most important thing I learned was to let the final dough in the Baggett form to over proof a little so that when you snip the dough with your scissors it  does not puff as much as mine did when baked. Also, turn the cut pieces upward a bit to expose the cut side. 

Mine wasn't exactly picture perfect but people still ate it!

epi

Dave

 

idaveindy's picture
idaveindy

epi = figuratively represents 1 stalk of wheat.

sheaf = a bundle of multiple stalks.

A quick search turned up some examples of bread shaped like a _sheaf_, not just one stalk. 

https://eatwheat.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/wheat-sheaf-1.png

https://bigoven-res.cloudinary.com/image/upload/t_recipe-1280/wheat-sheaf-bread.jpg

It looks like each stalk was individually formed, par-baked, assembled into a sheaf, then baked as a whole. If the individual stalks are not par-baked, then I would suppose they are very low hydration, in order that they not meld into one blob.

Either way, they look more like decorative bread, not bread for eating.

BTW, Hamelman's 1st edition has a section on decorative bread.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=wheat+sheaf+bread&t=fpas&iax=images&ia=images

HTH.

Abe's picture
Abe

Thanks idaveindy. 

Cellarvie's picture
Cellarvie

Sorry if I was a bit obscure in my question.  Yes, I thought it would be fun to make a loaf shaped life a sheaf of harvested wheat for our harvest festival supper.  Thanks for the links Idavindy, some beauties there.  I found this helpful and rather charming video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-T9laN_Yl4.  And I'm thinking I'll probably aim for a low hydration, low yeast dough, unless others advise otherwise.  Should be fun.