February 7, 2015 - 6:32am
Question - Difference Between Porridge and Gruel
In my most recent bake I used some Bob's Red Mill 10 Grain Whole Grain hot cereal and let it soak overnight.
For the next loaf I want to use the hot cereal after it has been cooked.
So is the cooked hot cereal "porridge" or "gruel" ...?
Thanks.
-Dave
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Gruel is a thin porridge with high liquid to grain ratio.
gruel was just ugly looking porridge:-)
Years ago janetcook was putting what she called 'gruel' in her bread all the time and i'm pretty sure it was the thicker porridge rather than the thinner one. My, my...... she really helped change the bread world forever!
just sounds nastier. Porridge used to dorky but is now cool - thanks to Chad Robertson!
Karin
Boxes have to be bilingual, and the Quaker Oats box declares itself to be 'gruau' in French. Translated, it means 'gruel'.
if any, works like Tangzhong. To much pre-gelantanized starch can make the dough heavy and wet. Could call it a roux, too! Just made some from Einkorn this morning, fooling around with it trying to make a less sticky 100% Einkorn dough. Man! That stuff is sticky, 4x more than rye! Makes a nice roux 1 to 5 H2O (5% of total flour)
Famous quotes from yours truly.
"Gruel rhymes with Cruel so how ever you like your porridge, the other one is gruel." :)
"Upon your fork it will not stand, the spoon you'll need for gruel at hand." :)
My next loaf - fermenting now - has whole grain porridge as part of the preferment. I cooked up some of the Bob's Red Mill 10 Grain Wholegrain Cereal and used some in the preferment. I started with about 25g of starter with about 50g of cooked cereal and 50g of water for the 1st build. The second build I added 150g of cooked whole grain, 50g of white whole wheat, and 200g of water.
I made the dough today and the amount of "extra moisture" carried by the preferment was a bit ... shall we say, interesting. I was shooting for 82% hydration with Reinhart's Basic Sourdough recipe ... not sure if that's where I ended but this dough reminds me of ciabatta dough.
This dough is mostly KAF white BF so it should be interesting to see how it finishes.
More later.
Thanks again everyone!
-Dave