Formula Development II - The Quest for Taste

Despite the advice of my graduate school advisor- "Rules are for suckers" (an attitude which I have always thought accounted for the number of indictments among those who went to the Dear Old Place) I have always been the kind of person who tries to follow the rules.

So when (shameless plug coming) the Bread Baker's Guild of America (BBGA) tells me that soakers should be "hydration neutral" - I'll do my best to comply. This week's bake however left me wondering about glib statements and vowing that some teacher in some class in the hopefully near future will be faced down with unrelenting questions about what the heck that means and how does one achieve it.

So it seems I have tipped my hand that I have included another soaker in my formula for panned bread.

In what can be considered a daring move for me, I also included a pre ferment (Varying two things at a time - oh! the horror!). True to my nature, I agonized about just what kind of pre ferment to include. I just knew that a touch of levain would add depth to the flavor of the bread, but I thought long and hard about the general tone I have sensed on these pages that one must use levain to produce great bread. I continue to hold on to my belief that commercial yeast can still make great breads, but when push came to shove I realized that I have plenty of starter just hanging about the house waiting to be put to use, and it was foolish not to do it. Not that I wanted a pure levain bread - but a little bit couldn't hurt. As an offset to this I did lower the yeast content.

But first, on to the soaker. I had some wheat bran in the house from an earlier milling run. Always mindful of folks' desire to get a little more "roughage" in the diet in painless ways, I was thinking about the bran - which could be re-milled to powdery softness and maybe - put in a soaker! How to determine "hydration neutral"? I thought that I had a method for that - just put a measured amount of water to the bran and then the next morning strain out the water and voila - hydration neutral!

I was alarmed when the bran/water mixture became more a slurry than anything else but assumed (and you know what that makes of you and me) that in the morning the bran would settle to the bottom and all would be well.

Meanwhile, I mixed up the pre ferment, which I made at 60% hydration so as not to use up too much of the water that would be poured over the oatmeal. I only wanted a touch of flavor, so I settled on 5% of the flour in the pre ferment (which is somewhat in line with what I have been using in my lean hybrid breads.) And so - to sleep, perchance to - oh, you know.

Next morning full of the optimism that a warm and sunny day in the Mile High City always inspires in me, I confronted my bran soaker (well, the first thing - and I do mean the very first thing - I did when hitting the kitchen was to heed the words of "my teacher" who told us that we need to invoke our "baker's instinct" and always check the pre ferments upon entering "the bakery") which had, indeed, not settled out into any kind of distinct layers, but sat in the bowl as the same slurry it was the night before. As I poured it into my finest sieve, little water came out and it remained in the sieve as a quivering, gelatinous mass - not dripping water, but distinctly moist. Hydration neutral my clavicle.  Nothing to do but mix it in and see what happened.

What happened was a gloppy mess in the bowl of my precioussss. I've seen slack doughs in my life, but this was beyond that. I added measured amounts of flour until it became a soft, sticky dough.

Of course, we are not supposed to do this. Why? Anyone? Bueller? That's right. Because we add other ingredients as percents of the flour and greatly adjusting the amount of flour will throw off the balance of the formula. But in my defense, this is formula development - not a final bread to be sold to customers. The formula presented below shows amounts against my adjusted amount of flour.

I have considered (and rejected) doing an intensive mix for this bread to up the volume (although the volume is certainly acceptable). I've had the opportunity to taste what intensive mix will do to baguettes and while this bread is deriving plenty of flavor and color from the molasses, I still wanted to preserve the wheat flavor by not mixing intensively. Although I do consider that I am being chicken hearted with my mixing times with some other products...

After a fold, the dough behaved very well and was shaped/proofed and baked.

How was the bread? I was right about the levain - it added depth of flavor without making the bread sour. The bran was invisible and did not interfere with the rise at all, nor did it seem to taste of anything. I'm not sure the bran was worth the effort and I'll be removing that from the next iteration (Bran Soaker, please pack your knives and go!). The levain will move forward, although I'm considering how that might morph next week.

Still no pictures this week. I am doing a little work with the doctors at "the place" about why I hate photography so much and perhaps next week. But the loaves were brown little loaves - fine crumb.

In the meantime, here's the formula that I used just so the record is complete. It isn't bad - it's just that the bran soaker was more trouble than it was worth.  This doesn't have all the cool color codes of the BBGA formula format, but the actual data is in the correct format.  Don't be too distressed by the baker's percentages - they are actually calculated as they should be and are correct, but may be just slightly different than others you have seen.

Because I haven't converted the oatmeal solution to a proper soaker (since apparently I don't know how), there is a bit of variation with boiling water (for the oatmeal) and levain water being two separate water measurements.

If you are baking this bread - do NOT use the "Total Dough" column to mix or weigh anything.  Use the "soaker" area to weigh/mix for the soaker, the levain area to weigh/mix the levain, and the final dough area to weigh/mix your final dough.  This is similar to, but not identical to the usage of columns in "Bread, etc".  Be careful.  I have a little quip about this, but it is too rude for TFL. 

Combine the two types of oats, boiling water, milk powder and shortening.  Allow to cool to lukewarm. 

Add the salt, molasses, yeast, levain, soaker, and flour.  Mix 5 minutes on the single speed of the spiral mixer. Or use your preferred method of mixing.

Let rise until doubled - 2 hours at cool room temperature.  Fold.  Let rise again - about 2 hours at cool room temperature. 

Shape and place in greased pans.  Proof (1 hour) and bake at 375F for 40 minutes.  Remove from pans and cool on a rack.

Until next time - Happy Baking!