Danni3ll3's blog

This is a repeat of Trevor’s European Peasant Bread (with the substitution of Kamut instead of wholewheat) while implementing Dabrownman’s suggestions: “I would do three different things with the levain build.  I would first get the starter amount up to 15 g from 10g.  Then get all the bran into the first feeding of the levain all 35g so it is in the acid the max amount of time and go to a 2 stage levain build with the first stage being 4 hours and the 2nd stage 8 hours.  Then I would use the high extraction flour from the whole grain for the 2nd stage of the levain rather than the unbleached white flour.“ My levain builds were longer than suggested but I did follow the rest. 

Recipe:

 Makes 3 loaves

150 g freshly milled spelt

150 g freshly milled rye

150 g freshly milled Kamut flour

820 g unbleached flour

50 g freshly ground flax

850 g filtered water

23 g Himalayan pink salt

30 g local yogurt

280 g 100% hydration levain (procedure for this is in recipe)

 Two nights before:

1. Mill the kamut, spelt and rye separately using whole grain berries and sift out the bran to feed the levain. Weigh the bran and set aside. Mine ended up weighing 35 g. Weigh out 105 g of the rye and save for the levain. Put the remainder of the rye and the sifted kamut and spelt in a bowl. Add the unbleached flour and the freshly ground flax. Reserve.

The morning before:

1. After refreshing my starter 2 or 3 times, I took 15 g of starter and added all of the bran with 35 g of water. I let it sit at room temp for about 12 hours.

The night before:

1. Feed the levain the reserved rye flour and 105 g of water. Let rise overnight. It should have more than doubled by the morning. I wasn’t ready for it in the morning, so I just stirred it down and let it rise again.

Main dough:

1. Autolyse the flour/flax mix and the water for about 4 hours. Sprinkle the pink salt on top for the autolyse. This can definitely be shorter but I had a Pilates class in the middle and some errands to run so it stretched out to four hours.
2. Add the yogurt and the levain and mix well. I did 100 in bucket folds to make sure everything was well integrated and gluten development was well on its way. The dough tightens up and you can’t really do a stretch but you can fold the dough over itself going around the bucket. The dough smooths out nicely and you can see all of the bran from the levain evenly dispersed throughout the dough. Cover and place the dough in a warm spot to rise
3. Do sets of stretches and folds about 45 minutes apart for the entire span of bulk fermentation. It came out to 4 sets. Bulk fermentation took 4 and half hours and the dough rose about 30-40%. There were lots of bubbles around the edges of the container and the dough felt very billowy.
4. Lightly flour the top of the dough in the bowl/bucket and dump out onto a bare counter. Lightly flour the top of the dough again and divide into 3 equal portions of about 790 g.  Pre-round the dough with a scraper. I must say that I think Trevor would be proud of me this time. I managed to round those loaves with minimal flour and minimal sticking! ?
5. Let rest for 40 minutes and then do the final shape. I used the same shaping technique that I used for my last bake. Flour the top of the boule, flip it over, pull out the top corners and stick them to the center of the dough. Do the same for the two bottom corners. Then take the points that were formed and overlap them in the middle, going all the way around. Flip the boule over and spin it like a top until you have a nice tight shape. Place in rice floured bannetons, cover and put to bed in the fridge for the night. 
6. The next morning, heat the oven to 475F with the dutch ovens inside for at least 45 minutes. Place rounds of parchment paper in the bottom of the pots and gently place the dough seam side up inside. I first turn out the dough on a counter sprinkled with cornmeal and then pick it up by my fingertips to put in the pots. Touch wood, I haven’t burned myself yet, using this method. I will though one day! ?
7. Cover the pots and bake the loaves at 450 F for 25 minutes, remove the lids, do a little dance because the loaves look great, drop the temperature to 425F and bake for another 22 minutes.

Once again, I got great oven spring. It is amazing how much a loaf springs up when there are no add-ins in it and only 35% whole grains. 

At the one of the local bulk stores, I came across some barley flakes. I had been wanting to try barley based on Ian’s porridge breads so barley flakes came home with me. I love cranberries (as if you didn’t know by now) so cranberries were something that needed to be added. Searching TFL for a fruit/barley recipe, I came across a recipe from 2014 by Emkay: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/39217/so-many-apricots-and-barley-porridge-apricot-bread. It was very helpful in creating this recipe.  Then I found my rosemary cranberry pecan crisp recipe and though why not: Rosemary and seeds too! The rosemary can be omitted but I know it gives an amazing flavour to the crackers but I also know that a little goes a long way. So here goes:

Makes 3 loaves (Note that I make 4 batches at once so some pictures will show this)

Soaker:

90 g barley flakes

180 g boiling water

30 g yogurt

Add-ins:

100 g dried cranberries

50 g pumpkins seeds

50 g sunflower seeds

20 g sesame seeds

1 1/4 tsp finely chopped fresh rosemary

Dough:

660 g unbleached flour

220 g freshly milled Selkirk wheat flour (255 g Selkirk berries)

110 g freshly milled rye flour (127 g rye berries)

7 g vwg

50 g fresh ground flax seeds

715 g water

22 g salt

245 g levain (Explanation follows)

A night or two before:

1. Mill the Selkirk and rye berries. Sift out the bran and reserve for the first stage of the levain.

The night before:

1. Boil the water for the soaker and add to the barley flakes. Let cool and add the yogurt. Let sit overnight.
2. Toast the pumpkin, sunflower and sesame seeds in a dry frying pan. Once cool, add the cranberries and reserve. 
3. Before going to bed, build the first stage of the levain by feeding 42 g of water and 42 g of reserved bran to 18 g of your starter. You won’t see much activity by the morning but your nose will let you know that things are happening!

Dough:

1. Early in the morning, feed the levain 84 g of water and 84 g of bread flour. Let rise until it is very bubbly and has peaked. This took 5 hours at 73 F room temp.
2. Mix all of the flours and the vital wheat gluten very well. The vwg has to be well dispersed before the water hits the mix. 
3. Add the dough water to the soaker and stir to loosen. Then mix it in with all of the flours. Let autolyse with the salt sprinkled on top while the levain finishes rising. 
4. Chop the rosemary very finely and add to the cranberry/seed mixture.
5. Add 245 g of levain. Mix well to integrate the salt and the levain. So a few stretches and folds to continue developing the gluten.
6. Do 3 sets of folds each 30-@45 minutes apart. Add the toasted seeds, cranberries and rosemary during the second fold (Put the dough on the counter and do envelope folds and sprinkling the add-ins on the bare parts of the dough; Thank you Dab for the explanation on how you do this!) Then do hourly folds until the dough is showing bubbles on the edges and on top. It was our wedding anniversary (39th!) yesterday and hubby took me out to dinner, so that meant a side trip to the fridge while we were out. The dough was almost doubled by the time we got back and I let it warm up on the counter for an hour or so. 
7. Carefully remove the dough from its container (try to not deflate it) onto a bare counter, sprinkle it with flour and divide into 3 equal portions. Sprinkle tops with a bit of flour. Round into boules using a dough scraper and let rest for 45 minutes to an hour. Sprinkle more flour on the balls and flip the balls over. Reshape the balls into boules by cinching, flip the boules right side up and tighten the skin by spinning each ball. Be sure that each boule has a nice tight round shape. 
8. Sprinkle some rice/ap flour into the bannetons and then place the dough seam side down. Cover and place in a cold fridge (37F) for the night. For me this was 9-10 hours. 

Baking:

1. Preheat the oven and the pots to 475F for an hour. Place parchment rounds in the bottom of each pot and carefully place the boules seam side up. Cover and bake for 25 minutes at 450F. Uncover and bake for a further 20 minutes at 425F. Final internal temp should be at least 205F.

The dough felt really silky as I was doing the folds. I don’t know if it was the barley or what but it was nice!

I also like using no flour on the counter when I turn out my dough and rounding using only the dough scraper. This is only the second time I have tried this and it sure makes a lot less mess. I still get a bit of dough on my fingers but nothing like usual. 

In the end, they turned out quite nicely with decent oven spring. Crumb shot when we cut one open. 

Hubby went through the weekend loaf in no time and there is no bread in the freezer so I needed to do a mid week bake. I based this bake on Edo Bread’s Small Daily Loaves which is basically a 1:2:3 type of loaf. http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/56031/small-daily-loaves

I don’t have exact amounts for the rye Red Fife mix because my scale was misbehaving and what I thought was equal amounts turned out to be more rye than Red Fife. My fault as I didn’t have the scale on a level surface. Then I had more sifted flour than the planned 200 g so I just threw it all in the loaf and reduced the amount of bread flour. So that explains the weird amounts. 

Makes one loaf. 

267 g of a mix of freshly milled Rye and Red Fife flour, sifted

100 g AP Unbleached flour

83 g Bread flour 

325 g Water 

15 g yogurt 

11 g Salt 

150 g 100% hydration Wholewheat levain

1. Refresh your starter with 1:2:2 feeds over a day or two. I used all Wholewheat flour. 
2. Mill enough rye and Red Fife berries to get 267 g of sifted flour. Feel free to adjust amounts. Save the bran for dusting the banneton. 
3. Add the all purpose and bread flour as well as the water and let autolyse for 40 minutes. 
4. Add the salt, yogurt and levain. Mix well and roll, fold and stretch until the dough starts sticking less to the walls of the bowl and there is some gluten development. 
5. Do 3 sets of folds a half hour apart and go to hourly folds until the dough has bubbles on the sides and the top. Because I was going out for dinner, I put the dough on hold in the fridge for about four hours. When I got back, I did a stretch and fold and put it in a warm spot. I resumed the hourly folds until bulk was done. 
6. This is where I tried something totally different. I wet my hand and slipped it around the dough to release it and dumped the dough into a bare counter. I lightly dusted the top of the dough with flour and then used my scraper to round it out a la Trevor Wilson. Once I got a nice tight shape, I let it rest for 40 minutes. 
7. After 40 minutes, I flipped the dough over onto a barely floured counter and pulled the dough out into a rectangle. I then pulled the two top corners out like Mickey Mouse ears and folded those to the center. I rolled the top towards me pinching the front edge with my thumbs. When I reached the bottom edge of the dough, I sealed the seam with the heel of my hand. The result was a nice batard shape. 
8. The banneton was dusted with both rice/ap flour and reserved bran. The bartard went in seam side down. 
9. Cover the dough and place in the fridge for the night. The dough didn’t rise much if at all by the next morning. 
10. In the morning, heat up the oven with a graniteware roaster to 500F. This is where I should have gone with my first thought and that was to line the toaster with some parchment paper. I didn’t do that. I sprinkled some cornmeal instead. 
11. Bake at 475F for 25 minutes and then remove the lid and bake another 15-20 minutes until the internal temp is at least 205F. 

I got amazing oven spring! 

I got amazing crumb! 

I also got an amazingly stuck loaf!!

?

My brother asked to add him to my bread list on a bi-weekly basis. Diabetes runs in the family and his doctor has told him to give up white bread in order to stay ahead of the game. So who best to emulate and steal recipes from but our very own Dabrownman! Well, while doing that, I discovered that Lucy is truly an evil creature! A four short legged creature, but evil nonetheless! The things that she puts Dab through in order to produce a loaf is nothing short of torture. No wonder his recipes start on Monday and finish on Friday. I spent a good part of each day this week, dealing with a myriad of different steps and discovering a few things along the way:

1. Dehydrating sprouts takes a lot longer when you have a thick layer of grains. And using the rack that has the plastic liner for fruit leathers isn’t a great idea. I need to get one more piece of window screen to line that particular tray.
2. Unhulled buckwheat is not the best thing for making sprouted flour. When you milled this, it leaves chunks of hulls that are very unsightly and huge! Remilling these chunks didn’t help at all! I finally sifted them out and gave them to the birds. They probably won’t eat them either!
3. Using 12% as the amount of bran that will be extracted from the sprouted flour is too low. I was short 25 g so I need to up the amount of grain I sprout and mill.
4. I hate toasting flax seeds! They start thinking they are Mexican Jumping Beans once the heat hits them and they fly all over the place. Even putting a screen on the frying pan didn’t help much! It makes it hard to ensure that the sunflower and pumpkin seeds that I put in the pan with the flax seeds actually get toasted. 
5. Next time, I need to grind at least half of the flax seeds to get a better dough and for better nutrition.
6. I need to use VWG more. Bread flour in the small 5 lbs bags is expensive and I go through them like there is no tomorrow them I am making 4 batches at once. 
7. I originally dropped the hydration to 78% from Dab’s 85% but the dough felt too stiff so I brought up the hydration to 80% at the first set of folds. Dab had mentioned that this was quite a wet dough so I decided to be more conservative and add if needed. I should have added even more as the dough felt quite heavy in the end.

So here is the recipe:

Makes 3 loaves

Dough:

261 g of sprouted flour from Red Fife, rye, Spelt, Buckwheat (use hulled, not unhulled like I did, it will save you a lot of grief and agravation), Oats, Kamut, Selkirk wheat (hard red spring wheat variety), and Einkorn berries. (I used 62 g of each grain for sprouting. Next time, I think I would increase this to ~65 g. Process for making this flour explained below.)

355 g unbleached flour

330 g bread flour

700 g of water + 25 g

22 g salt

35 g yogurt

352 g 100% hydration levain (builds explained below)

Add-ins:

88 g pumpkin seeds

88 g sunflower seeds

88 g flax seeds

Making the sprouted flour:

1. Weigh out the berries for sprouting and rinse them well under water. Leave to soak about 6-8 hours, drain well, and leave to sprout, rinsing occasionally, until the rootlets are just visible on the end of most of the berries. Don’t let the roots get too long. They should be about 1/16 to 1/8 of an inch. Total time from first washing the grains, soaking and then letting sprouts was 33 hours.
2. Place grains in a dehydrator and dry until they are completely hard when you bite into a seed. If you crack a tooth, they are just right. ;-) The other way to find out if they are dry enough, is to weigh the berries and see if they equal the initial weight. In the past, dehydrating sprouted berries took only 3 hours but because I was making 4 batches and I had a thick layer of grains on each rack, this took about 7 hours.
3. Put the grains through the grain mill and freak out because there are huge chunks of buckwheat seed coat in the flour. Decide if you want them in the dough or not. I chose “NOT”! To me, they looked like crushed insect exoskeletons. Ewww!
4. Sift out the bran with a screen, then sift the bran again through a coarse screen to remove the buckwheat hulls but keep the rest of the bran for the first levain build and for dusting the bannetons. (I did this by first hand sifting the flour through a regular kitchen metal sieve to get the coarsest of the bran. I tried running this coarse bran through the mill on extra fine but the flakes still stayed huge. I even tried buzzing them up in a bullet. No luck! So I gave up on the idea of including these in the dough. The flour from the hand sifting was run through the Komo mill fine sifting attachment to get more bran extraction. Then I put the coarsest screen on the attachment and ran the hand sifted bran through. This got rid of those huge hull flakes but still gave me plenty of bran for the levain and dusting the baskets). 
5. Save 176 g of the sprouted flour for the levain build and reserve the remaining 261 g for the main dough.

Add-ins:

1. Weigh out the needed seeds and toast them in a dry frying pan. Be prepared to have your flax seeds impersonate Mexican Jumping Beans. Your kitchen will need a clean up after this activity!
2. Reserve the seeds.

Levain Builds:

1. A couple of days before making your dough, take 6 g of your starter and feed it 19 g of water and 19 g of bran. Stir every 8 hours or so. You won’t see much activity if any, but have no fear, the little creatures in there are doing their thing and multiplying like crazy. 
2. Just before going to bed the night before, add 176 g of water and the 176 g of sprouted flour that was reserved for the levain. Stir down in the morning and refrigerate if you aren’t ready for it. Let rise again.

Main dough:

1. In the morning, mix all of the flours with the add-ins and the water. Let sit for a couple of hours in a warm place (82F). Add the salt, the yogurt and the levain. Mix well to integrate the salt and the levain. I did 50 folds in the bucket. 
2. Do 4 sets of folds each a half hour apart. Add the 25 g of water with the first set of folds. Let rise until 80-90% (~4.5 hours). Even though the dough had a lot of bubbles, it still felt quite solid. I don’t know if this was due to the add-ins or to the sprouted flour.
3. Carefully remove the dough from its container (try to not deflate it), and divide into 3 equal portions of about 780 grams. Loosely shape into a boule and let rest for 45 minutes. Reshape the balls into boules and tighten the skin by spinning each ball like a top on a bare spot of the counter. 
4. Sprinkle some of the bran into the bannetons and then place the dough seam side down. Cover and place in a cold fridge (37F) for the night. 

Baking:

1. Preheat the oven and the pots to 475F for an hour. Place parchment rounds in the bottom of each pot and carefully place the boules seam side up. Cover and bake for 25 minutes at 450F. Uncover and bake for a further 20 minutes at 425F. Final internal temp should be at least 205F.

The boules felt quite firm when I took them out of the bannetons and I had doubts about good oven spring. This was justified as the first batch of six had minimal oven spring.  So I took out the other half dozen out of the fridge and let them warm up about 45 minutes on the counter before baking. The second batch had very slightly better oven rise and I got a deeper colour on the crust for some reason.  

So not a bad bake for Earth Day as I don’t think you can get more earthy than this unless you go for a 100% whole grain loaf!

It was time to start clearing out the fridge of ends and bits of stuff, mostly dried fruit, left over from previous bakes. Unfortunately, I didn’t get through all the bits but a lot of them found themselves into this bread.

Makes 3 loaves

Dough

151 g freshly milled sifted Red Fife flour (170 g Red Fife berries)

152 g freshly milled sifted Kamut flour (170 g Kamut berries)

97 g freshly milled sifted Einkorn flour (115 g Einkorn berries)

552 g unbleached flour

50 g freshly ground flax seeds

650 g water

20 pink Himalayan salt

30 g yogurt

266 g of 80% hydration levain (procedure outlined in recipe)

Add-ins

50 g bulgur

50 g hemp hearts

25 g sesame seeds

125 g of mixed dried fruit (thompson and golden raisins, chopped dates, mixed peel and currants)

30 g honey

200 g boiling water

Two days before:

1. Mill all berries and sift out the bran. Reserve the bran for the levain and for topping the loaves. 
2. Place all flours and ground flax seed in a bowl or bucket, cover and reserve.
3. Take 5 g of your starter and feed it 15 g each of water and reserved bran. Let sit for at least 24 hours, stirring every 8 hours or so. There will be no visible rise or bubbling but you can tell it is active by smelling it.

The night before:

1. Toast the bulgur, hemp hearts and sesame seeds in a dry frying pan. Add the mixed fruit, the honey and the boiling water. Cover and leave overnight.
2. Before bed, feed the starter 128 g of water and 160 g bread flour. This will triple by the morning. Stir down and let rise again until you are ready for it. (This makes a bit more than you need.)

Dough:

1. Add add-ins to the reserved flax/flours and mix in the water. Make sure that all the flour is hydrated. Let sit for an hour and half to 2 hours.
2. Mix in the salt, the yogurt and 266 g of the levain. Ensure that everything is well integrated and that you can see some gluten development. Place in a warm spot (~82F).
3. Do 4 sets of folds each a half hour apart and let rise until 80-90%. The dough should be very aerated and you should see bubbles on the edges where it meets the walls of the container.
4. Carefully remove the dough from its container (try to not deflate it), and divide into 3 equal portions (~816 g). Loosely shape into a boule and let rest for 20 minutes. Reshape the balls into boules and tighten the skin by spinning each ball like a top on a bare spot of the counter. 
5. Sprinkle some of the bran into the rice/ap floured bannetons and then place the dough seam side down. Cover and place in a cold fridge (37F) for the night.

Baking:

1. Preheat the oven and the pots to 450F for an hour. Place parchment rounds in the bottom of each pot and carefully place the boules seam side up. Cover and bake for 25 minutes at 425F. Uncover and bake for a further 20 minutes at 400F. I bake these at a slightly lower temperature to prevent burning because of the fruit and the honey. Final internal temp should be at least 205F.

Enjoy!

CedarMountain posted this recently and it looked absolutely delicious so I pretty well followed his recipe aside from reducing the hydration and adding a tiny bit more levain just to use it all up. He makes a batard and a boule but I made 3 boules out of the one batch of dough. 

Dough

80 g sifted rye (90 g of rye berries)

170 g sifted Selkirk wheat (190 g wheat berries)

750 g unbleached flour

700 g water

20 g salt

250 g levain (100% hydration)

whole wheat and bread flour to feed the levain (procedure explained below)

Add-ins #1

50 g ground sesame seeds

100 g hemp hearts

150 g boiling water

Add-ins #2

50 g chia seeds

50 g flax seeds

50 g toasted hemp seeds

250 g boiling water

A couple of days before

1. Mill rye and wheat berries. Sift out the bran and reserve the bran to feed the starter. Measure out the necessary flours and reserve. 
2. At the same time, I measured out all my seeds and reserved those as well in separate containers.
3. Remove 10 g of starter from the fridge and feed it 20 g of the bran and any left over flour from the rye and Selkirk wheat. Add whole wheat flour if needed to make up the 20 g. Add 20 g water and mix well. Continue to stir this every 12 hours and keep at room temp (73F).

The night before going to bed

1. Feed the levain 100 g of bread flour and 100 g of filtered water. Let sit at room temp overnight.

Dough making day

1. The levain should have doubled and since I wasn’t ready for it, I simply stirred it down and let it rise again.
2. Grind the sesame seeds and the hemp hearts. I did this in a bullet and had to do it in small batches as the seeds clumped. CedarMountain suggested adding a bit of the water to help get a finer grind. Add the boiling water. Mine ended up looking like soup but it did thicken a bit over time.
3. Add the boiling water to the second set of seeds and let sit for at least a couple of hours. After an hour or so, I combined both sets of seeds because I was so concerned about the soupy first mixture. That helped a lot and produced a fairly thick mixture. 
4. Autolyse the flour and the water and let sit for an hour. After the hour, add the salt and the levain. Let sit in a warm spot (82F) for a half hour and do a set of folds. 
5. Let sit another half hour and add the seed mixture to the dough. This was not fun! The best way I found to do this was to spread the dough out on a wet counter, spread the seed mixture on the dough, roll it up like a jelly roll in one direction, then rolll it up like a giant snail in the other direction, do a few more of these, squish all the dough together to force the seeds into the dough and finally, I resorted to doing French slaps and folds. This was a bit of a mess with seeds flying through the air and sticking to everything within flying distance. Thank goodness, hubby was in house cleaning mode and he kindly waited till I was done for the day and he took care of the floors (I cleaned up the counters. I am not that cruel after all.) Now I remember why I usually mix in the add-ins at the autolyse stage rather than waiting till the second fold. With one batch, you just get through it but when making 4 batches, you get to resent the dough a bit when you get to the fourth batch of dough. I will have to try making this again putting in the add-ins at the beginning and see if it makes a difference in the results.
6. Do another 2 sets of folds a half hour apart and let rise 80-90%. I didn’t know this when I was making the dough but CedarMountain let his rise 30%. I checked out my dough at 30 and 50% rise but felt that my dough was not ready so I let it go till just under doubled.
7. Flour a counter heavily as this is one wet dough! Flour the top of the dough and scrape it out on the counter. Divide into 3 equal portions (or 2 one boule and one batard as per CedarMountain) and preshape into boules. Now this was a lot of “fun”. The dough was sticky, sticky, sticky and slack. I must have done 2 or 3 reshapes before I got the dough in some semblance of a boule. Picking up the dough in the middle and letting it fold itself in half really helped give it some structure. I did that probably a couple of times before doing the preshape. I kept thinking of Trevor who says to keep your fingers moving and use a light touch. Well, this woman still ended up with major dough fingers!
8. Let rest 10-15 minutes (Cedar let his rest 30 minutes) and do a final shape. This was a quick, flip over, make into a boule and flip back. Then I lightly floured the top of the boule and twisted it round and round (like a top) until I got a decently taut skin (Pulling it towards me on the counter would just have added to the layers of dough on my hands). Then I quickly dropped them seam side down into rice/ap floured bannetons and covered them with bowl covers.
9. They went into a very cold fridge for overnight proofing. 
10. The next morning, I baked them as per my usual: Preheat pots and oven to 475F, place parchment rounds in the bottom of the pots, flip the boules seam side up on a cornmeal sprinkled counter, quickly place the boules seam side up in the pots, cover, bake for 25 minutes at 450F, remove lids and bake for further 25 minutes at 425F. The dough stiffened up nicely during the cold proofing so it wasn’t too floppy when I was placing it into the dutch ovens.

I got awesome oven rise out of these and they smell heavenly! This is a great recipe! Thanks for posting it, CedarMountain!

Time for Easter so that means a fruit bread is “de rigueur”. I tweaked and adapted a version that I made for Canadian Thanksgiving back in October.

Makes 3 loaves

Levain

148 g bread flour (I used a combo of spelt bran and sifted flour as well as bread flour)

118 g water

30 g starter

Porridge

125 g large flake oats

25 g oat bran (combo of oat bran and spelt bran)

345 g water

75 g plain yogurt

Main dough

633 g unbleached flour

17 g vital wheat gluten

302 g freshly milled and sifted spelt flour from 347 g Spelt berries

50 g freshly ground flax seeds

75 g dried cranberries

75 g candied mixed peel

75 g toasted sunflower seeds

50 g honey

300 g apple yeast water

250 g water

22 g sea salt

266 g levain

A couple of days before:

1. Mill 347 g of Spelt berries and sift to obtain ~302 g of sifted flour and ~45 g of bran. Use 302 g of the sifted flour for the main dough and reserve the bran and the remaining few grams of sifted flour to revive or feed the starter. 
2. Revive or feed your levain every 12 hours or so for a day or two to have it very active. Use the bran from milling the Spelt to feed it.

The night before:

Porridge

1. Toast 125 g of large flake oats. When toasted, add 25 g of oat bran to the oats. I ran out of oat bran so I added some Spelt bran to top up to the right amount. Mix together 345 g of water and 75 g of organic plain yogurt. Pour 3/4 of the water/yogurt mixture into the oats and cook on medium heat until water is absorbed. Add the remainder of the water/yogurt mixture and cook on low heat for a few minutes. Cover and cool overnight. (This can be done in the morning of but I prefer doing the night before and leaving it to cool overnight to room temp.)

Levain

1. Mix 30 g of starter with the 148 bread flour (I used up the remainder of the bran and the sifted spelt flour and topped up with bread flour. Ratio ended up being about 1/3 bran/sifted flour to 2/3 bread flour.) and 118 g of water. Let rise overnight.

Final Mix and Bake:

1. In a large bowl, place 633 g of unbleached flour, 17 g vital wheat gluten, 302 g of freshly milled spelt flour, and 50 g of freshly ground flax seed, and stir well to distribute the vital wheat gluten. Add the 75 g of dried cranberries, 75 g of mixed peel, 75 g sunflower seeds (toasted in a dry frying pan), mix again and then add all of the oat porridge, 50 g of honey, 300 g of apple yeast water  and 250 g of filtered water. Mix well and let the mixture sit for a couple of hours.
2. Add 22 g of sea salt and 266 g of 80% levain. Mix in well using folding and pinching until you see some gluten development which takes about 5-10 minutes.
3. Let rest 30 minutes and do a set of folds. Repeat two more times 45 minutes apart and then let sit in a warm place until risen 50-60%. There should be irregular sized bubbles visible through the walls of your container (hopefully it is transparent or translucent, otherwise, this may be a feat for Superman. ;-) ) and the dough should feel very aerated or billowy. This took about 5 hours. It probably took that long because the ayw was right out of the fridge. 
4. Divide into 3 equal portions of about 890 grams and do a loose pre-shape. Let rest 15-20 minutes and then shape fairly tightly into a boule. Place boules seam side down in rice/unbleached floured bannetons and cover with a plastic shower cap or bowl cover. Place into fridge overnight.
5. In the morning, heat oven and Dutch ovens to 475 F for at least 45 minutes. Place parchment rounds in the bottom of the pots and put the loaves directly out of the fridge into the pots. You may choose to score them but this is not necessary since they are being baked seam side up. Bake at 450 F for 25 minutes, remove lids, drop temperature to 425 F and bake a further 25 minutes.

And since we are having Easter dinner with family, I said I would be bringing dessert: Carrot cake and sticky buns. The carrot cake still needs to be iced but it’s a good start. 

I loved the taste of this bread so decided to make it the way it was originally written by Hamelman as much as possible (except for the addition of yogurt) since I am doing this by hand and he used a mixer. I also used some vital wheat gluten to replace his high gluten flour which I am guessing is around 15% protein. To do this, I found the niftiest online calculator. 

http://flourmath.bradfordrobertson.com

Hamelman calls for wholewheat flour and I used sifted freshly milled Red Fife flour. The bran was used in feeding my starter to get it up to speed before making the final levain.

Makes 3 loaves

Liquid Levain build 

272 g Bread flour 

343 g Water 

55 g Starter (liquid)  

Soaker

100 g Rye berries

100 g Flaxseeds 

85 g Sunflower seeds 

85 g Oat groats

484 g Water, boiling 

6 g Salt 

Dough

533 g Unbleached flour 

15 g Vital Wheat Gluten

274 g Sifted freshly milled Red Fife flour  

303 g Water 

30 g yogurt 

21 g Salt 

All of the Soaker 

650 g Levain 

A couple of days before

1. Soaker prep: Crack the rye berries and the oat groats by putting through a very coarse setting on the Komo mill. I turned the dot right to the back to get the texture I wanted. Reserve. Grind the flax seeds coarsely in a Bullet or spice grinder. Add to the rye and the oats. Toasts the sunflower seeds and add to the rye, oats and flax. Add the 6 g of salt. Cover and reserve.
2. Main dough and levain prep: Mill 320 g of Red Fife berries and sift to obtain ~278 g of sifted flour and ~36 g of bran. Use 274 g of the sifted flour for the main dough and reserve the bran and the remaining few grams of sifted flour to revive or feed the starter prior to making the final levain. 
3. Main dough prep: To the 274 g of sifted flour, add the unbleached flour, the vital wheat gluten, and the salt. Cover and reserve.

The night before making the dough

1. Levain: Twelve to sixteen hours before the the final mixing of the dough, put all of the ingredients together for the levain and keep covered at room temperature (73 F).
2. Soaker: Add the boiling water to the soaker ingredients and cover. Leave to cool overnight at room temperature.

Final mix and bake

1. Put the water and the yogurt for the dough in a bowl and add the soaker. Mix well to loosen the mass. Measure 650 g of the levain, add to water and soaker, and mix again. Add this mixture to the reserved flour mix. Mix well to integrate all ingredients and do several series of folds to begin developing the gluten.
2. Place the dough in a warm spot (oven with the lights on and the door cracked open) and do 2 sets of folds a half hour apart. Do another set 45 minutes later. Let rise 50%. My dough rose more like 60-70% by the time I got to it. This took 3 hours at about 82 F. 
3. Divide the dough into 3 loaves of ~900 g and pre-shape gently on a lightly floured counter. Let rest 15-30 minutes. Do a final shape by cinching and pulling the dough to make a fairly tight boule, but without deflating the dough. Place seam side down in rice/ap floured bannetons and cover. Put to bed in the fridge for the night.
4. The next morning, pre-heat the oven and the Dutch ovens to 475F. Place parchment rounds in the bottom of the pots and place the dough in seam side up. Score if desired. Cover and bake for 25 minutes at 450F. Remove lids and bake for another 25 minutes at 425F or until the inside temperature is 205 F or or more.

They came out of the oven looking very nice!

Leslie made some fantastic loaves with this recipe and since it was something that I had seen a number of people try and produce amazing loaves, I decided to give it a shot. Of course, I had to go and change the way the dough was put together. ?

I went ahead and used Trevor’s premix method but when it came to mix the soaker with the water and flour for the main dough, I realized that this was not going to work because a lot of the hydration came from the levain, and with the pre-mix method, the levain doesn’t go in till the next morning. So at first, I thought, no biggie, I will just steal some water from the levain and it will be all good. Well, uh! No! If I stole enough water from the levain to be able to mix the soaker with the flour, I was left with only 46 g of water to hydrate the 225 g of flour. So that wasn’t going to work. 

I was going to need to add a lot more water to the whole recipe. So I went with 70% hydration for the dough flour (the soaker had sucked up all of the water and didn’t look like it was about to give any back, it was that firm) and 80% hydration for the levain which came out to 13% more hydration than what Leslie posted in her recipe without the extra bits she added while making her dough. I crossed my fingers and hoped I didn’t end up with soup when I mix the levain in with the main dough in the morning. 

I also did one more change and that was to use the wholewheat flour in the levain instead of the a/p flour it called for. I wanted the bran to be softened by the acid in the levain. So the pre-mixed dough was all a/p flour. Our Canadian flour is ~13% protein (if you can believe the company’s claims) so I didn’t use any vital wheat gluten or high gluten flour.

And the last thing to note is that I scaled this for 3 boules of about 750 g.

Here is what I did:

Soaker:

80 g rye chops

80 g flax seed

70 g sunflower seeds

70 g oat groats

7 g sea salt

367 g boiling water

Main dough:

665 g unbleached flour

16 salt

465 g water

Levain:

46 g starter

180 g water

225 g Selkirk wheat

1. Soaker: Mill the rye chops and the oat groats very coarsely. It ended up looking a bit like coarse salt. Coarsely grind the flax seeds. I did this in a magic bullet as the Komo mill people don’t recommend using oily seeds in their mill. Combine the above with the sunflower seeds and toast the entire mixture in a dry frying pan. Add the salt and the boiling water. Cover and set aside for a few hours.
2. Premix: Measure out the water for the main dough, throw in the soaker and loosen it so there are no lumps. Add the salt for the main dough and then the flour. Mix well and put in the fridge for a few hours. Before going to bed, take the dough out of the fridge and let it sit overnight on the counter at room temperature.
3. Levain: Mill the Selkirk wheat and sift out the bran. Remill the bran to make finer particles. Reserve. Before bed, dissolve the starter in the water for the levain, add the bran, stir well, then add the flour and mix. It will be a thick mix as this is 80% hydration levain using whole grain flour. Leave to rise in a warm place overnight.
4. In the morning, add all of the levain. Mix well using folding and rolling until the levain is well distributed in the dough. Dough felt pretty sticky and loose, but the Levain mixed in easily. 
5. Place in a warm place and do 3 sets of stretches and folds one hour apart. The dough came together nicely with the folds even though I could feel that the hydration was a lot more than what I usually work with. I had a gap of a couple of hours between the second and third fold because I had a lunch date with friends. I probably would have done hourly folds otherwise. I let it rise to 40-50%.
6. Divide the dough and pre-shape gently by rounding the dough on a lightly floured counter. Let rest one hour, covered. Do a final shape by cinching and pulling the dough to make a fairly tight boule, but without deflating the dough. The dough felt quite soft but did support its own weight as a boule. Place seam side down in rice/ap floured bannetons and cover. Let proof on the counter for an hour and a half, and then put to bed for the night.
7. The next morning, pre-heat the oven and the Dutch ovens to 475F. Place parchment rounds in the bottom of the pots and place the dough in seam side up. Score if desired. Cover and bake for 25 minutes at 450F. Remove lids and bake for a further 22 minutes at 425F.

Well the results were very little oven spring. I wonder if I should have added that vwg after all. I also wonder if the gluten in the Levain  degraded during the overnight rise. It did feel sort of very loose when I used it. Hopefully, the taste makes up for the appearance. I need to make this again but following Leslie’s procedure this time. 

Making sprouted flour is something that I have been curious about so I slightly adapted one of Dab’s recipes from last summer. And since I used Trevor’s pre-mix method earlier this week and had good success with it, I decided at the last minute to use the same method for this bread. 

That wasn’t my original plan since I was going to use part yeast water, dump everything together except for the salt and the levain, let sit while the levain did its thing and then mix in the last two ingredients. I had to give up the yeast water since I wasn’t sure what would happen having it sit overnight and then adding the levain and the add-ins. The yeast water will have to wait for another time. 

Makes 3 loaves

29 g each of Kamut, Spelt, Rye, Red Fife and Selkirk wheat berries (to be sprouted and milled into flour)

26 g each of Kamut, Spelt, Rye, Red Fife and Selkirk wheat berries (to be sprouted and used whole)

957 g unbleached flour

50 g freshly ground flax seeds

100 g dried cranberries

100 g shelled pistachios

30 g yogurt

735 g filtered water

22 g salt

305 g of 100% hydration levain (method is included in recipe)

1. A few days before making the dough, weigh out 29 g each of Kamut, Spelt, Rye, Red Fife and Selkirk wheat berries for a total of 145 g. Soak them for 4 hours and then drain. Rinse and drain every 8 or so hours until the berries show three little white rootlets buds. This took 30 hours. Spread a thin layer of sprouts evenly in a dehydrator lined with window screen (so the berries don’t fall through while drying) and dry for 3 hours. Weigh the dehydrated berries to ensure that you have roughly 145 g which let you know that they are dry enough to be milled. Mill the berries and reserve for the levain. 
2. Use the same method to sprout 26 g each of the same grains (Kamut, Spelt, Rye, Red Fife and Selkirk wheat berries). I sprouted these a little bit longer but I try not to have the rootlet grow longer than the berry itself. Refrigerate until dough making day. Bring to room temperature before using in the dough.
3. A day or two before making dough, revive your starter so that it is active. I did several feedings 10 - 12 hours apart.
4. Early in the evening before, mix the water with the flour, ground flax and the salt into a shaggy dough. Put into the fridge for a few hours.
5. Toast the pistachios in a dry frying pan and reserve along with the dried cranberries. The pistachios toasted really quickly so they really to be watched closely. 
6. Before going to bed, take the dough out of the fridge and let warm up to room temperature overnight on the counter. 
7. Also before going to bed, feed 25 g of your starter with 140 g filtered water and all of the sprouted 5 grain flour. It doubled overnight and was ready in the morning (8 hours).
8. First thing in the morning, mix the levain and yogurt with the dough. With the first batch of dough, I did a few minutes of slaps and folds to mix in the levain and then the add-ins but I felt like I was tearing the dough, so the next 3 were all done inside the bucket using folding and rolling. I let the dough rest a few times to let it relax and allow me to continue without ripping it. Once the levain is well mixed in, add the pistachios, cranberries and sprouts, and continue the folds to get everything integrated. Let rest for an hour. 
9. Then do 2-3 sets of stretches and folds an hour apart. Place the dough in a warm spot and let it rise about 50% or maybe a tad more. 
10. To release the dough from the bucket, I wet my hand and ran it all the way around and under the dough, rewetting as necessary. Then I made sure one side of the bucket was wet and slid the dough out on that side. The whole thing stayed intact without deflating. 
11. Sprinkle a bit of flour on the mass and divide into 3 boules of about 840 g. Pre-shape gently into rounds without deflating the dough. Let rest 1 hour and then shape using the cinching method. Tighten and round out the boules by pulling the dough on the counter.
12. Place seam side down into rice/ap floured bannetons, cover, proof on the counter for another hour, and put to bed for the night in the fridge.
13. The next morning, about 15 hours later, heat up the oven and the Dutch ovens to 475 F for 45 minutes to an hour. Place parchment rounds in the bottom of the hot pots, score and place the dough inside and cover. Scoring isn’t usually my thing but I found my lame and scored the loaves even though they were seam side up. 
14. Bake at 425 F for 25 minutes. Uncover and then bake for a further 20 minutes. I usually bake at 450F for the first part but thought I would try a lower temp to bake a bit less dark as often the loaves with fruit in them end up with an almost burnt bottom. It worked like a charm!
15. Cool and enjoy!

I got pretty decent oven spring considering all the add-ins in these loaves. They sure smell heavenly! Crumb shot when we cut one open.