Well, what can I say, some of my friends have been hearing me agonize about my dense inedible or barely edible whole grain bread for a while so I've decided to post about the process this week. I decided if I had to sit around all day making one kind of bread, I might as well make two. I decided on both a Seeded Rye loaf as well as a Seeded Wheat loaf - seed lover that I am. I keep a stiff starter affectionately known as Julieta and a liquid starter affectionately known as Yorick.
Here is Yorick, he likes fame and says it's nice to meet you
So the process goes something like this. You maintain your starter, and if you are a weekend baker like me, Yorick & Julieta live most of the time in the fridge. If I want to bake Fri/Sat. I take them out Wednesday night, feed them in the evening and then again in the morning repeating. Friday night I build the levain also known as the part of the starter I'm going to use in the bake. Since I was doing two kinds of seeded breads I did two levain builds, and toasted seeds for each the night before. Then in the morning I mixed the mature levain with the flour and water etc. for the initial proof and growth. For rye, after it gets bubbly and happy it goes directly in the pan to rise until bake. It's super wet and heavy going into the pan even though it's bubbly. This is a 13" pullman pan. I little seeded rye, anyone?
Here is the seeded rye rising in pan to bakeresting in a warm place until it's readyta-daa. done but we don't get to taste until 48 hours of resting, arrrgh
With wheat during it's initial proof it gets what are known as stretch and folds. This sort of takes the place of kneading bread made with regular commercial yeast. This dough is way too wet to knead. The process is just different.
This is right after the third stretch and folds (I did 4 total 1 every half hour) then rest without folding for 2 more hours. The stretch and fold technique takes a slack dough and helps develop the gluten here it's sitting up more like bread right after the stretch and folds.And here is the final loafAnd the interior...
Hooray! It's not too dense to bite through easily. It's delicious toasted. I'd still like to get bigger holes and lighter loaf but this is finally edible. wooo-hooo now we have a base line to improve on. I'm using the recipe for Della Fattoria's seeded wheat which is roughly 70% whole grain. I've made this before without success. I used a different whole wheat flour this time it's stone ground and I changed the recipe in several ways. I'm wondering if the flour difference is why it's so much less gummy.
The rye loaf is a mashup of the Perfect Loaf's Rye Sourdough and some ingredients from Trine Hahnemann's Rye Bread recipe from Scandinavian Comfort Food which I got at my neighborhood cookbook book store Omnivore Books plus my best guess at what Kantine is putting in their seeded rye. It's my current addiction available commercially.
