Results of the "non"- Vermont Sourdough with increased whole grains and a rye/whole wheat bread with altus SD starter...........

Wohooo,back from vacation and here now I can finally post about my two recent bakes.

Some of you witnessed the strange transformation the Hamelman Vermont SD w/increased whole grains took in my kitchen.Here is a synopsis with pictures:

- due to me being too frazzled to actually do the most sensible thing-using the metric large scale amounts to reduce to home size, I ended up with a way different percentage ratio.

  So, I went by the cup measure in my book for the liquid levain(due to laziness!-first and last time to use cup measure!) levain therefore was 3/4 cups of flour,1/2 cup of water,1.5 T SD

then the baker's % for the dough ended up being the following:

70% AP flour

30% whole grain rye

65% water

1.89% salt

all the levain

I followed the instructions for dough assembly-I ended up baking it in a loaf pan,because the dough felt kinda wet and I was doubting it could hold its shape(yeah, not one of the better baking days!).Of course I did not heed the advice Mini gave me previously of putting the dough into a pan, that would allow it to rise unhindered and therefore my bread,yet again, got stuck on the edge of the loaf pan, since it was too much dough for my pan.Oh well, the bread tasted AWESOME, though!

Am looking forward to making the actual bread from Hamelman's book soon!

Here are pics:

Yummy, moist and very stable crumb(what I mean by that is that the bread could be sliced very thinly-1/4 " or so)-excellent crunchy crust!

And now to the re-vamped "Hannoversches Doppelback"(original recipe by W. Fahrenkamp) bread. I had posted about this bread before and made a few changes this time around:

-I used the SD starter I had fed with old rye bread.It was very active and sour smelling.

-refreshed my Old-rye-bread starter in the morning (a generous 50g of it) with 150 g of rye flour and 100g of water

-let it ferment in the oven with pilot light until about 5.30pm

- I omitted the yeast from the bread and therefore used 50 g more SD than the original recipe called for

- 500 g whole rye flour,500g white whole wheat flour,1 Tbls salt, abt 750g water........I let the water and flours autolyse for about 40 minutes( I have no idea if that helped the dough in any shape or form, but thought I would try it).mixed the rest of the ingredients...let bulk proof for about 2.5 hours......folded the dough-maybe the autolyse was responsible for the fact that I could actually,marginally fold the dough at all, and stuck it into a bowl lined with a floured towel(yes, if I had a Brotform, that would have been perfect). Final proof was about 1 hour, even though I think 45 minutes would have been better-the dough seemed very puffy.And since I inverted the dough onto the parchment to be slipped ont he baking sheet I can tell you that the bottom of the loaf has a few large bubbles.

- I had just bought a baking stone and ended up pre-heating the oven withou it in it, which is responsible for the delay in baking and running the risk of overproofing the dough.

-I pre-heated to about 500 fahrenheit-after 10 minutes down to 475-then after 10 more down to 450-after 10 more minutes down to a wee bit under 400 to finish baking for about 40 minutes. The bread baked for a total of 60 minutes( to that add the double bake time).I took it out,turned the oven to 475 again, painted the bread with a mixture of starch and water and stuck it back in the oven for about 15 minutes.I let it cool until the morning, before cutting it open.

It is definitely more sour than the breads I have made with just regular SD starter.It is getting very very close to tasting like bread from the Munich Hofpfisterei!The crust is super crunchy-just perfect! I don't know if I should expect the bread to have a higher profile, since the orginal recipe calls for it being baked in a loaf pan and I decided to bake it directly on the baking stone this time.I also seemed to me that I could have used just a tad less water............................

Here are the pictures:

Sorry about the unfocused crumb shot-my camera was being uncooperative.

Am working on some Hamelman Baguettes with Poolish right now and am eager to see how they will turn out!

I am so glad I am re-united with delicious bread!

Christina