Hello from North Augusta, SC
I am back to baking our own bread after a 30 year hiatus. My husband and I are originally from Germany and upon moving here 46 years ago we found a bakery that made beautiful rye bread. The baker became our friend, but he retired 30 years ago and I had to learn to bake our own bread which I did until I found a source in Canada (Dimpflmeier) that would ship bread without shipping charge. I ordered huge amounts and froze the bread. Then came 9/11. Importing bread became very expensive. At first I found Vollkornbrot at Big Lots and then when we got an Aldi I bought it there. I baked Flaxseed bread on the side to alleviate the monotony.
I recently found two tins of Backferment in my freezer that dated back 30 years and I decided to give it a try. Everything took a bit longer than the instructions said, but it worked. I remember loving to bake with it and since it doesn't make a sour bread I started with that starter again. (With Backferment you do not need to feed the starter once you have it made and it lasts 4 months in the refrigerator.)
Alas my eyes aren't what they used to be and I misread 1/4 cup of water for 1/2 half cup. I have been adding flour like crazy to get the proper consistency. This was going to be a rye bread. Well, now I have 4 small loaves. They are still hot, but I can't wait to try them.
Welcome to TFL, dosal! What is Backferment? How does that work, not feeding it for four months? And, how did your rye loaves turn out? I hope they were wonderful!
Hello David, Backferment consist of a mix of whole wheat and garbanzo bean flour. In order to ferment this they use organic raw honey.I bet there is water in there as well, but it never gets mentioned. I wish I had the proportions. This gets fermented under the right humidity and temperature. Then it gets dried and even ground I hear. The medium in the tins is granular.
In order to make the starter you have two steps. 1. you take a Tbsp of the granules and add water and flour. this ferments for 12 to 18 hours at about 100 F. 2. You use the mix of part one and add more water and flours. Ferment again at 100F, this time for 5 to 10 hours.
This is your final starter. You just use one tsp. of this one one tsp of the granules for a 2.5 pound bread.
Backferment seems to only be available in Germany. Amazon.de carries it. Amazon.us only has books for sale.
I baked some delicious bricks. I had not measured the extra flour that I added and I may have added way too much rye flour as well as whole wheat. On top of that my bannetons were new and obviously didn't have enough flour to release the dough.
About an inch of dough stuck to the liner when I tried to remove the bread. I peeled this off and put it on top of the loaves. I had some oven spring, however, all of this extra dough created a thick crust. Better luck next time.