Roggenmischbrot mit Korner und Hafer

Roggenmischbrot mit Korner und Hafer



I have to be honest with you. This bread was originally called Weizenmischbrot mit Saatan und Haferkleie but I made some significant changes to the formula so I renamed the bread. Its another David Wolfe original. I changed the word "weizen" to "roggen" because I replaced the cracked wheat with rye chops. I changed "Saatan" to "Korner" because Alex explained that Saatan refers to seeds that are used to grow crops rather than those that you eat. I also changed "Haferkleie", oat bran, to "Hafer", whole oats, because I didn't have oat bran and substituted whole oats. The new name is now Roggenmischbrot mit Korner und Hafer.
Similar to all of the other German breads that I have baked this year, this loaf starts off with a rye sourdough build. This one was already 100 percent hydrated, so I did not need to make any hydration adjustments, as I explained in my last post. This bread did call for a hot water soaker because cracked grain is a much coarser grind than grain chops. And although I replaced the cracked wheat with rye chops, I still used the hot water soaker. The soaker for this bread contained sunflower seeds, flax seeds, rye chops, oats, boiling water and all of the salt in the final dough. Note that salt is often added to soakers particularly in the warmer months. This helps to reduce the enzymatic breakdown of the grains incorporated into the soaker. I recall learning about this in Hamelman's bookBread. Actually, I had a brief moment of panic when I realized that I had not added any salt to the final dough. Then I remembered that the salt was already incorporated into the grain and seed soaker.

As usual, I toasted the sunflower seeds in this soaker even though they are already roasted and salted. Heating up the oils inside the seeds allows their flavor to permeate the soaker and thusly the final dough. I never toast flax seeds. First of all, I know they are hard to absorb, and heating the oil degrades the nutritional value further.  Additionally if you try to toast them, they pop in the pan and go flying all over the place and make a big mess. Feel free to toast the oats if you wish. I feel that this is a Mickey Mouse sort of thing, because it really will not make much of a difference. In the future I will use full oat groats, which will tend to give the soaker a bit more crunch and grit.
The last change that I made to this bread was less significant.   I replaced malt extract with malt syrup. I happen to own and love malt syrup. I love the color and its robust flavor, so I always use malt syrup in place of malt extract. I also always use instant yeast in place of fresh yeast at a rate of 40%. (1 g of fresh yeast = 0.4 g of instant yeast).
Although this bread does contain a fair amount of bread flour in the final mix, is is still fairly heavy in nature and very robust in flavor. The final dough contained less than 100 grams of whole rye flour, but when you take into consideration the whole rye flour in the sourdough build and the rye chops in the grain and seed soaker, it makes a significant contribution. Had I used cracked wheat, this bread would have had much different characteristics. All in all, I am glad I made the changes. I guess that I will never know how the original would have been, so I will have to bake it in the future.

The mixing of this bread was very simple: five minutes on first speed and five minutes on second speed. The dough really did come together. About half way through the mix it looked too wet so I let it just mix for a while and it really came together perfectly. Roggenmischbrot mit Korner und Hafer is another medium heavy, full flavored rye bread that makes this baker smile!

A photo without flash to show to full bake on this bread! Chef Miscovich would be pleased!