Bread - Number 60: Kasha Bread a Nifty Taste

With hints of Eastern Europe in the kasha and of North America in the whole wheat, this bread has an unusual soft taste, the source of which I never would have been able to pinpoint had I not seen the recipe or made this bread. There is a good amount of sourdough starter as well. I deleted from my dough the commercial yeast in the recipe as well as incorporating a nice slow rise for the sponge and a decent interval for the bulk fermentation. It does not hurt that I am rereading, nee savoring, Hamelman's Bread, a book that is quite inspiring, though I try to concentrate more than he does on whole grains. Hamelman would suggest Academy Awards for bakers; alas he is not a self-promoter and the kudos of the bread world seem not to have gone to his head. He lives in Vermont and Vermonters tend to look askance at people getting too big for their britches. 

This bread is approximately 50-50 whole grain or perhaps just slightly less so, but only because of the amount of kasha. (In case you are confused, I use the term kasha to mean cooked buckwheat groats.) The source of the recipe is Breadtime, a book I adore for its range of grains in the recipes and its commitment to whole grains, but which takes an unusual approach in its recommendation of low baking temperatures. Many books, this one included, add commercial yeast even to recipes with sourdough starter, as if fearful of relying on this ancient source of leavening. I say "screw that," basically, by refusing to add commercial yeast and adding more time instead. I do not care if a dough takes two or three days or additional hours before it is ready for baking. Except when I am in a rush, but that usually happens after I have made the no-commercial-yeast decision anyway.

Total ingredients for the dough
304g water
115g starter (about 20 percent less than the recommended 1/2 cup)
310g whole wheat flour
308g bread flour
11g salt
13g coconut oil
221g cooked buckwheat groats

Sponge
243g water
115g starter
193g bread flour

I tend to keep my starter between 65 and 100 percent hydration. Since I generally use small amounts in my doughs and do a longer rise, the difference in percentages do not matter much. Here, at over 100 grams, I should be more precise. As I had recently taken to weighing (for a short while) my starter feedings, I would say it was in the 80 to 100 percent hydration range.

Mix all ingredients for the sponge. Cover. Leave out overnight or all day. I left mine out for about 10 hours. It was nice and bubbly. I then placed it in the fridge.

A few hours later, when I was ready to cook the kasha, I took the sponge out of the fridge and placed the bowl in a warm bowl of water to just de-cold the sponge bowl.

Dough 
Sponge
61g water
115g bread flour
310g whole wheat flour
221g kasha
13g coconut oil
11g salt

I made extra kasha because I love to eat it. This is a taste from my childhood, though I tend to combine it with beans, which my mother and the mothers before her probably would not have done. It was weird mixing it into a dough. Definitely get your hands in there to declump the kasha and the coconut oil so that they are well integrated evenly throughout the dough.

The instructions called for kneading, but I thought I would get by with stretch and folds. I ended up somewhere in the middle. 

Mixing and then what?
Mix dough thoroughly. Cover for a half hour and let rest. I did one stretch and fold at about 40 minutes. The second one I did 15 minutes later, but handling the weak dough, I changed course and kneaded for two minutes, lots of stretching and some folding with that. I left the dough to rest for another 15 minutes and ended up doing the same manipulation of the dough. It really gained strength from the extra kneading.

I would suggest doing the first kneading after a 15-minute rest and then at 15-to-30 minute intervals thereafter for two brief sets of kneading. 

My dough rose for about three hours in a warm kitchen before shaping and a final rise.

Shaping and baking
When the dough appeared fully risen (explanation below), I did a stretch and fold and allowed the dough to rest while covered for 15 minutes. 

How can you tell when the bulk fermentation - or first rise - is done?
How do you know when a dough has risen sufficiently for proceeding with the next stage? My opinion is to avoid all recipe instructions about volume increases - as in the dough should double or triple in volume. Why? The answer is that I can never tell when a dough has expanded sufficiently to qualify as having doubled, tripled or whatever. 

What I can observe and what I rely on is the condition of the dough. Here are the questions I pose to myself.

1. Is the dough slightly larger, but in pretty much the same shape as how you left it? Not done. 
2. Is the dough still somewhat flat on top? Not done.
3. Has the dough lost its original shape, its appearance of having been folded or kneaded? Getting closer.  
4. After observing #2, has the dough separated on top from the bowl and risen to a slightly spherical appearance? Probably done or very close. You want the dough at right about the point where it stops puffing up on top and it has not gone more than a tiny bit toward flattening on top.
5. Good time now to peek frequently at the dough. Don't worry, be obsessive. You will not be able to avoid staring at the dough.
6. Is the dough just starting to flatten after doming somewhat? Good sign it is done and time to act quickly as it is close to over rising. 
7. Better to err on the side of an under-do for the first rise than to allow an over-rise.
8. If the dough has flattened after it once had a roundish-appearance on top, you can always make another dough. Likely the results for an over-rise will not be stellar, but the bread will still taste okay. Just proceed and bake it; not good anyway to be too much of a bread snob.

Baking
Preheat oven one hour prior to baking to 400 degrees. Yes, this is a relatively low temperature for baking bread. The Breadtime book across the board recommends temperatures much lower than most other bread mavens. I preheated the top of my la cloche in the oven on the baking stone.


After the stretch and fold and the 15-minute rest described above, I shaped the bread for a loaf pan. I set the dough in the loaf pan to rise, covered, of course. I take the step of spraying non-stick spray into the loaf pan. I left the dough for a one-hour final rise.

I baked for 20 minutes at 400 degrees and then reduced the oven temperature to 350 degrees, which seemed absurdly low. At 30 minutes I removed the top of the la cloche. The bread took a total of 47 minutes to bake.


Wow, lots of oven spring. I was afraid I was going to fine a giant hole inside the crust, but no. Nice bread and rose very well. A bit of an unusual taste, as if the kasha softened the crumb. The kasha lends a very subtle taste, so subtle that I would bet no one would ever shout out, "Whoa, a kasha bread!" This bread tasted like a good whole wheat bread, just a bit outside of the ordinary. The appearance is not competition worthy as I failed to make any pretty slashes and allow for the dough's expansion, but a good, wonderful bread that displays my starter's continuing happiness in helping breads to rise.

Coming Up: Blue Corn and Buckwheat Breads

Never send another person to buy flour. Instead of cornmeal, which one visualizes in a Platonic way as yellow or golden, this wonderful non-baker shopper (whom I love and adore) sees "cornmeal" on the package and purchases blue cornmeal. Since I passed on the ditzy, perhaps inattentive, genes to this person, it is not proper for me to complain. And why not use blue cornmeal? People make blue or bright green candied apples after all, though that unnatural coating seems likes a poor analogy for an attempt to branch out to new grains in my bread making. Somehow the direction to purchase a small package of whole wheat flour for the upcoming whole wheat and buckwheat bread got translated, shall we say misinterpreted, into a large package of generic, store brand flour that I have doubts about. Again, why not try it once? Just because I have grown dissatisfied with the whole grain flours of a different large flour producer does not necessarily mean anything.

Had my mother sent me at the same adult age to the supermarket with a similar list I most likely would not have done better. The goal at that age is to be thanked, which happened before I looked at the purchases, reimbursed (check), but not appreciated sufficiently to be asked to regularly perform the task. Check on that as well. It's the Car Talk theory of domestic task avoidance: Do the task willingly, though not well. In this person's case discussed here, no such Machiavellian calculation occurred; just the airheadedness (probably not actually a word, let alone an adjective) that I myself passed on.

Next up
On my agenda are a cornmeal and white flour bread from Hammelman's Bread and that whole wheat and buckwheat from Breadtime. After a month of remaking the same two breads - numbers 57 and 58 - and rushing around so much that I resorted to old favorites I have practically memorized, I am finally moving forward with my resolution to branch out beyond wheat, spelt and rye sourdoughs, though those were all new not too long ago. Celebrate those small triumphs.

I wish my mom were here. She would be so proud of my humble blog, of my writing and bread making. She'd ask to sample everything and she would wholeheartedly and frankly offer her opinions. She would tell me "this will lead to something" as she did with my local - and this is a hyperbolic word to use - activism, which she ended up being correct about, though she passed away about six months before that happened. I still think she gave G-d or the powers that be in the universe her two cents and that was at least one of her requests. She probably had something to do with sweet AP, IB, and SAT scores (if you know the college application gamed in the US), college acceptances and perhaps one marriage. I know she would love the artwork I am doing and that she would comment that I've always had an artistic sensibility, though I'm not anyone else would agree and though she would never dream of advising me to give up the day job for anything so iffy financially as art. My dad, a quiet man, would have enjoyed the bread. It would have been just his thing. No sugar and something that would go with brisket or chicken. He would have introduced me as his daughter the bread maker, proudly, succinctly and without fanfare (after he mentioned, as he always did, that I am a lawyer - though not practicing, which he neglected ever to mention). I wish, as with some other avenues I have pursued since he passed away, that he could be here. I guess one never ceases to internalize parental pride, even long past the lives of the parents.

Color guessing
And now, in the next week, off to make blue bread (very Bridget Jones) and, cross my fingers, a nice whole wheat and buckwheat concoction. I love kasha, so very intrigued by the buckwheat recipe. I might visit the supermarket or the local food coop and purchase some "back up" flours in case doubt about the ones already sitting in my freezer overtake me. Curious nonetheless to see what colorful shade the blue cornmeal produces. I'm thinking a cloudy-day-at-the-beach, sort of blue-mixed-with-beige shade of blue.