Bread Number 101: Rye, My Mistake

I've made this bread four times and it tastes like a brick. Hamelman, the author, and lead baker at the King Arthur Flour Company (and former owner of a bakery in Vermont), suggests waiting to add the salt until the final dough phase, which means preceded by the vast majority of the fermentation time. This is unusual. Bread dough recipes uniformly advise throwing in the salt prior to the main fermentation, rising period.  

Hamelman has various dark rye recipes that go from 65-90 percent. We liked the 70 percent okay, nothing to write home about, but the dark dark rye of the 80-90 percent end of the range will not become either a household favorite or earn a place on the roster of breads I make frequently.

At 89 percent rye, one should not expect a light fluffy bread anyway; still, as far as taste, this one was a loser from the start. You have to actually like a dismally dark rye to eat this one more than once, My husband said that it tastes like a Russian Rye bread, so it is recognizable as a bread.

If there is one thing in its favor, other than being healthy, this is a good bread for a teleworker as there are four stages over the course of two days, with waiting periods of various lengths. Please be careful, however; this should be considered a three-day bread as the bread should rest for 24 hours after baking. This is not a Monday morning bread unless one begins on Friday. 

Ingredients

261g Rye flour

50g Bread flour

15g Malt

215g Water

6g Salt

Remember to add the salt. I was also going to try soaking the rye flour in the water at particular stages preceding the fermentation periods, the better to eek out more flavor, some sweetness, from the rye. I got busy and I forgot, but I would be curious if that singular, significant change would make a difference.

Day One

Good for starting in the afternoon and letting rest overnight, unless it is wintertime, in which case that second stage might go more toward the outer edge of 24 hours.

Stage 1

4g rye flour 

4g water

4g starter (one could precede the building of this dough with building a rye starter, but at a measly total of six grams total, I decided to use regular wheat-based starter)

Mix, cover, and rest for 5-6 hours. I found that the waiting period of the recipe was good for a warm kitchen or a summertime kitchen, but too brief for a winter kitchen's colder temperatures.

Stage 2

Rye starter from Stage 1

2g of starter - optional to add a bit more starter

50g rye flour

39g water

Mix, cover, and rest for 15-24 hours. One can see fermentation activity almost immediately, though this is not the bubbly exuberance of a wheat build.

Day Two

Need a half day, but only about two hours when you have to return to the dough with any frequency.

Stage 3

Rye starter from Stage 2

138g rye flour

138g water

Mix, cover, and rest for 3-4 hours. 

Stage 4

Rye starter from Stage 3

15g malt

261g rye flour

50g bread flour (or adjust based on the percentage of rye you prefer) 

215g water

6-7g salt (Hamelman recommends a baker's percentage of 1.8, but I generally prefer 2-3 percent)

Mix, cover, and rest for 10-20 minutes.

Baking preparation

Shape the dough and let rest, covered, for one hour. For the same hour, preheat oven to 490 degrees.

Put loaf in oven. I use a covered loaf pan for this one as it doesn't hold its shape well, but it was okay the time I made a boule. Reduce oven temperature to 480 degrees.

Ten minutes later, reduce oven temperature to 410 degrees. Total baking time will be 50-60 minutes. 

Let the bread stand untouched for 24 hours. The flavor will supposedly deepen. I did this and I still was not fond of the taste. Not my cup of tea.

Bread Number 102: German Rye with Sauerkraut

You might be wondering why this post is about Bread #102 and where Bread #101 could possibly be. After a year of intermittent attempts at that #101, a very dense rye, I am resolved to try it for a fourth time. Why has this taken more than a year? During the pandemic, when everyone was baking and becoming a sourdough enthusiast, my flour mill broke, followed by a several months-long back of forth episodes of shipping it, getting it fixed - for free - and then very quickly breaking again, I could hardly motivate myself to move on to new bread experiments, Also the day job became horrible, but that's another story.

Rye and sauerkraut - a match made in heaven

Yes, this bread recipe includes sauerkraut. I have a particularly good source at my farmer's market;  the vendor can be found at such markets throughout the DC area. Pick up some pickles as well at Number 1 Sons if you visit the nation's capital.  Lots of native New Yorkers scoop up the sour pickles, but the kimchi is also popular. Back to the bread: The sauerkraut is not overwhelming and, when combined with a very long rise, lends some depth to the sour taste, which I like, though I'll admit that might not be for everyone. I will say that my husband kept talking about how well this bread lasted, with toasting, throughout the week.

I love a nice long dough rise, a recipe that I can't help changing, and a good sour bread that turns out well, even better the second time around. I adapted the German Rye recipe from Brother Juniper's Bread Book to be completely naturally leavened and to rely on stretch and folds instead of kneading. I made this bread twice, with the same exact mix of ingredients each time.

Ingredients

137g coarse rye flour (1 cup)

352g bread flour (3 cups, less 50 grams to attribute for the starter)

3g caraway seeds (I added three times more than the recipe dictated, which was 1 teaspoon, or 1 gram.)

52g sauerkraut - Make sure to drain first (1/2 cup)

5g salt (The recipe does not recommend adding any due to the presence of the sauerkraut, but I did not think that non-commercial sauerkraut would be as salty as the jarred stuff from the supermarket.)

100g starter (wheat, not rye)

272g water (I added approximately 100g more than recommended because the dough was too crumbly, not at all cohesive.)

Dough preparation

Measure 1/2 cup of sauerkraut and set aside in a colander to drain while measuring the other ingredients. 

Mix dry ingredients - flour, caraway seeds, and salt - together and mix. 

Add the starter and water to the dry blend. No need to mix yet.

Weigh and add the 52g of sauerkraut. Mix everything together well. Cover.

Do three or four stretch and folds. Each stretch and fold should be separated by about 15-25 minutes. The dough will become more cohesive each time. My first try of this bread needed four stretch and folds, while my second try was just fine at three. 

Wait and wait

Each time I made this bread, and both times were in warm weather, the dough needed more than 18 hours to rise. The second try clocked in at over 22 hours and, frankly, I could have waited more, but I wanted to get the bread done in time for a normal bedtime. The recipe in the book only takes 90 minutes, but that is with 1.5 tablespoons of instant yeast. 

An 18-24 hour rest is fine with me. No need to babysit the dough; return to it the next morning or evening. In fact, this would probably make a better morning dough so that one has more wiggle room. Just return to the kitchen the next morning, say 21 or 22 hours after those stretch and folds are done, and the dough will be ready - or almost ready - to proceed.

Shaping and baking preparation

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

On a wet counter, I shaped the dough into an ovally rectangle and let it rest in a greased loaf pan, covered. I cover with another loaf pan and I bake that way as well. The metal loaf pans can go right in the oven with the dough. While the oven heats, let the dough rest for 1 hour, 15 minutes.

Reduce heat after 20-30 minutes to 350 degrees.

Before putting dough in the oven, uncover, sprinkle some water on top and then more caraway seeds. Cover the loaf pan. I use the second loaf pan for that and then no ice, water, etc., are necessary for a good steam to turn that nice dough into spectacular bread. Baked for 54 minutes, with nine minutes at the end uncovered. 

Taste

The bread is a bit sour, but the hearty, coarse rye and the caraway seeds balance the sourness. Wonderful! Husband says this is in the top ten.

Bread Number 96: Yet Another Challah Disaster

I am thinking the core of this disaster is my failure to convert a yeasted challah recipe into a sourdough recipe. I followed two similar recipes and neither went well. I kneaded and kneaded by hand; I added extra flour because the doughs were way too sticky; and yes, I did the math so that the contents of the starter was accounted for in the calculation of the flour and water totals in the dough. This is clearly a voodoo-doll-type of conspiracy by my family members to prevent the replacement of their beloved challah with an identical challah that is made with sourdough starter instead of commercial yeast.

For hundreds of years, at least, challahs were made with starters because no commercial yeast existed. So somewhere in my quest, I am missing a significant piece of information pertaining either to ingredients or to methods - or to both.

Grumble, grumble, grumble - a considering of escalating to an adult equivalent of a toddler's temper tantrum - except that with my adult wisdom I am able to appreciate how unimportant, even to me, is this failure and that, as the granddaughter of someone who survived many baseball seasons of failed World Series, the best lesson is to regroup and try again rather than to throw in the towel and consider this a personal and a permanent failing.

[Off-topic: Maybe, as the granddaughter of a diehard Brooklyn Dodgers fan, that is not exactly the right analogy. I did cry when finally my beloved Brooklyn got a major sports team (the Nets, who play basketball) after many decades and at the exact spot where the Dodgers should have moved - instead of awful suburban, auto-oriented, Los Angeles.]

Screw that ... had a little tantrum a year later

After a year of not making any new breads - the above challah disaster occurred in January 2017 - I am finally getting back into experimentation. This weekend, I made a dough so bad that I threw it in the compost before baking. I was trying to adapt a yeasted rye bread recipe from The Hot Bread Kitchen for a totally naturally leavened rye bread. Really, I wasn't disciplined; I didn't manipulate the dough as needed and then I let it sit far too long for the first rise. Probably did not help that I was trying to do this alone with a broken arm.

My tantrum was not about the abysmal dough, but a whiny complaint that bread books (okay, almost) always only include commercial yeast recipes and no alternatives for breads only made with starters. So there I am making calculations, while trying to enjoy a normal weekend, and knowing that the timing will be completely different.

The key, actually, is to commit to being home and monitoring the dough. And to waiting until the arm is sufficiently healed to knead, stretch and fold, or whatever with two good arms.

Sorry for the long absence

Why the long absence? A mix of a friend's long illness and death, which was very depressing because he and his wife both died young after suffering terribly from cancer in their last months; getting lazy and making only breads I make well and that everyone at home enjoys; and then the, I hope, blip of the broken arm. Need mojo, commitment, and patience, but first to go back and retrace some steps to make doughs that require watchful waiting and better sourdough starter maintenance. Ah yes, got lazy about that as well and now keeping the starters out on the counter and feeding them more often.

Here is a nice post from Mike's Weekly Baking Tips that goes into detail about the tradeoff of convenience versus quality of refrigerating a starter.

Last word/last tantrum: I hate counting that challah attempt because it came out so terribly. Stomp, stomp, stomp. Time to shut up, stop whining and get back to bread.

Bread Number 90: 70 Percent Rye with Spices

This recipe was adopted from a recipe for spiced rye rolls in Daniel Leader's Local Breads. I did 73 percent rye and I also made a rye starter beforehand. A slap on the back for some good planning. Apologies in advance if my math was off at all.

I grew the starter over the course of a week, having begun with maybe five grams of my regular starter, and adding only rye flour and water. I did three or four feedings.

Ingredients
150g rye starter
356g water
120g bread flour
365g rye flour
10g salt
4g caraway seeds
2g fennel seeds
2g dried chives

I added different spices than are in the original recipe and I recall a little less definitely that I altered the percentage of rye as well. The dough is has a hydration percentage of 80 percent.

Dough
The recipe called for kneading and I poo-pooed that instruction initially. I did one stretch and fold at 23 minutes, but the dough was not hanging together, so I switched gears and kneaded for three minutes. One should always be gentle with rye. It is much more sensitive a grain than wheat.

I covered the dough and let it rise for 6.5 hours. This is what teleworking is for. Instead of chatting with co-workers on the way back from the bathroom, I checked the dough and pondered for 20 seconds whether it was ready. Very productive.

Baking preparation
A  rye with such a high hydration percentage will not do well, in my opinion, without support. I made this bread in a loaf pan. I covered the loaf pan with the top of an oblong la cloche. It's a little clumsy kind of arrangement, but with slow movement, it works well.

First, preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Rye does not need super high heat.

Second, place the top of the oblong la cloche in the oven to preheat. Let it preheat for one hour while you do the final rise.

Third, oil hands.

Fourth, use those oiled hands to put the nice, goopy rye dough into the loaf pan and cover. The final rise happens in the loaf pan. This is a plus because no further handling of the dough with actual hands is necessary. 

The final rise was another place where I diverged from the recipe. I did a much longer final rise. After feeling like the first rise could have been longer, I added a half hour onto the final rise, which, conveniently, matched the preheat of one hour and made me feel comfortable staying with my usual final rise duration.

Baking
I kept the 450 degree temperature throughout the baking. Baking time of 40 minutes.

There was some rise, but not much. This is a rye and though rye is lovely, it does not do the glittzy, glamour of a spectacular wheat oven spring.

This bread had a wonderful taste of a dark rye with nice spicing that lent flavor without overpowering the bread. Very pleased.

Bread Number 88: Lovely Multiple of Four for My Group of Four Peaceable Writing Compatriots

It's 8:30 a.m. and I have a challah dough almost ready for braiding, a sponge sitting on the counter - made this morning - and the flour for that dough ground and protected in the freezer in a ziplock bag. I'll come home late this afternoon from the husband's minor surgery and finish that dough. The challah will be baked and cooling off by 10.

Just because I have not been working on this blog does not mean an absence of home-baked bread. I've been so busy with research and projects at work, so accustomed to and in the rhythm of making favorite breads, so procrastinating - oh yes - the upcoming challah challenge to finish up the 108, that writing here has taken a seat way back in the bus.

For you, my writing lady pals

From time to time during monthly dinners and writing critiques that are the rituals of the Blockheads, my writing group, I keep my pals up to date on the 108-bread project. They have been known to bite into and enjoy the fruits of this quest. About a month ago, they laid down a challenge. That challenge was to make a bread dedicated to them, a bread especially for them. But of course.

Four of us and 88 the next number - kismet. I would make a bread with four kinds of grains and two kinds of seeds and enjoy the mathematical loveliness of the number 88. Perhaps something took exactly 11 minutes along the way. Really not sure.

I bought whole wheat, rye, spelt, and farro berries, which can be used to make food other than bread, though I have not yet tried any of those. I made my usual sponge, described below, used my flour mill machine (a piece of genius), and mixed up a dough with a wonderful aroma. I added caraway and sesame seeds. Next to my much-loved rye bread, I think this one is my favorite. And I am so glad that my writing pals supplied the idea. I dedicate this bread to them.

To Rose, Jill, and Franca: Women whose writing I always look forward to reading, whose company I enjoy, and whose analyses give food for thought. 

This post is long overdue. I did the first try of bread #88 back in February and a second try three weeks ago. This is the recipe for the second try, which turned out to be a super delicious bread, at least to my happy taste buds.

Ingredients

Sponge
100g starter (100 percent hydration)
200g water
200g bread flour

I let the sponge rest for 10.5 hours in the kitchen.

Dough
150g whole wheat flour
84g spelt flour
40g rye flour
26g farro flour
11g salt
4g sesame seeds (plus more for the top of dough when baking)
4g caraway seeds (plus more for the top of dough when baking)

All of the whole-grain flours were freshly milled by my brilliant German flour milling machine.

Stretch and folds and resting

Yes, I've become blase, I do things somewhat by rote, but that's because I've succeeded already in this 108-bread quest. I've learned so much that I'm not thinking,pondering, considering every move. I've discovered good moves that work well and just need monitoring.

Usually I do four stretch and folds, each separated by 15 to 30 minutes. This time I did three. The dough was ready; it had a decent amount of rye and spelt, which do not seem to require as much manipulation. Sometimes the best instinct is to stop. I did three stretch and folds at 20 minutes apart. I slightly and quickly shaped the dough.

I put the dough bowl, covered, in the fridge for 24 hours. When I put the dough there, it was almost 7:30, a perfect time to bake the next evening. 

Baking with rye and spelt

I did not go super high on the oven temperature here because of the rye and spelt, which, I've read and observed on breadtopia videos, do well significantly below 500 degrees. I preheated the oven - with the baking stone and top of la cloche inside - at 480 degrees. 

I shaped the dough, sprinkled on some water, and then sprinkled more sesame and caraway seeds on top. I also made an X-slash on top. I admit that I have not gotten at all creative on that part.

Upon putting the dough in the oven, I turned down the temperature to 460 degrees. At 15 minutes in, I turned it down further, to 440 degrees. I turned it off completely at 37 minutes. (That's a result of a previous mistake that ended up being spectacular.)

Total baking time: 42 minutes.
Taste: Fantastic. One of my favorites. Everyone seemed to like it. 

End note: I have to get back to putting in photographs. I miss the visual element. I like looking at bread and slices photos.

Bread Number 83: Am I Making Almost the Same Breads Over and Over? Yes

I have never sought out a career that demands travel. A few widely-spaced trips a year, fine. But for several months it felt like I was constantly out of town. I was not quite, but too much in terms of getting into a rhythm for bread baking. A whole week at home for Christmas week will revive me. Then, perhaps another trip in January.

Bread #83 was a rye with a little whole wheat flour mixed in because I had very few wheat berries left. Now it's time to reorder, but I haven't caught up with all manner of things at home after the last trips, those to beautiful Colorado, friendly Texas, and dynamic Alabama.

The nice part about baking for so long is that even off my game I have standard go-to formulas. This means I can whip up a dough and I feel confident without paying too much attention. Not how I generally like to proceed - fan of mindfulness and all that -  but there is other stuff in my life besides bread. 

Ingredients
200g starter (made with white flour)
290g water
38g whole wheat flour
141g rye flour
271g bread flour
8g caraway seeds
11g salt

I used a lot of starter because my jar was pretty full. Plus, I initially planned for an overnight rise at a kitchen temperature of 70 degrees. Turned out to be 65 and I left the dough out half a day more. It helped to have a person at home who could put the dough in the fridge, not a luxury one has with a regular commuter lifestyle.

Instructions
Mix all ingredients well and cover. I did two stretch and folds, each 30 minutes apart. Then I let the dough rise on the counter for 14 hours. Next, in the fridge for six hours.

Despite not much fridge time - I  usually wait for 24 hours of fridge time - I decided to bake. 

Preheat oven for one hour with dutch oven inside at 470 degrees. 

Just  before baking, take dough out of fridge. Shape, do the slash on top, and sprinkle with water. Don't forget to sprinkle some rice flour into the dutch oven before plopping dough in there.

I forgot, but I got lucky. No sticking of dough to dutch oven bottom.

Baking time: 53 minutes, the last five uncovered. Beautiful oven spring. Nice solid go-to bread taste. Nice to have a great bread be normal.

Second try

I left out the whole wheat flour because I have not gotten to the wheat berry purchase yet. I am buying food storage containers to store them and the order for wheat and rye berries should be made today. I accounted for the lack of whole wheat flour by increasing the bread flour amount to 339 grams.

This time the dough took 18 hours for the first rise, followed by 11 hours in the fridge. Lovely, lovely oven spring and a great taste. A nice rye is always a winner in this household.

Bread Number 82: Patience Saves a Gorgeous Rye

A rye awry?
I made the first version of this somewhat-under 20 percent rye bread a few weeks ago and it turned out perfectly. I did not taste it, but gave it away to my younger daughter when I visited her college town while on a business trip. Into the luggage went a freezer bag with two frozen breads and ice packs. I warned security as I've had issues before flying with large blocks of frozen food. Sounds like a comedy, especially if you are flying with raw ground fish to use for gefilte fish.

Back to the rye: This time, the white flour sponge went well. I mixed the dough; did the stretch and folds, and put the dough in the fridge. The next morning, I expected a buoyant dough, ready, enthusiastic even, to be baked. 

Indeed without looking at the dough, I preheated the oven with the dutch oven inside. But when I retrieved the dough, I stared. Not a good sight. A flat dough. To bake, to return to the fridge for perhaps another day, or to leave out, possibly until the afternoon (this being early morning)? Certainly, awry went the plan to have the bread baked and rested by lunch. Not happening. Hardly risen, definitely not buoyant or enthusiastic.

Rice flour mentioned below. Why you should have it and use it.

Not with a muffin

A muffin, a cake, a cookie, none of them do this to me. You mix, you bake, the same result each time, given equivalent ingredients, of course. Maybe I need to do some muffins for a while. To test whether I want to be a muffin proprietress. Corn, blueberry anyone?

So, I write down the time and muster the patience to wait to see if this dough is a dud or 
whether it wakes up and prepares itself to become a lovely bread.  Not everyone wants to be Cinderella. Happy to say the patience rewarded me with a lovely bread, one the spouse singled out for praise. Of course, with 80-plus percent white bread flour, I feel a bit like I cheated.

Still, excellent taste, pretty crust and crumb, and wonderful breakfasts of slices of bread, butter, and something hot to drink. I actually drink hot water - think tea without the tea bag.

Ingredients - totals
100g starter
400g bread flour
100g rye flour
310g water
10g salt

Sponge
100g starter
200g bread flour
200g water

Mix, cover. I left this out overnight for 9.5 hours and found a bubbly sponge in the morning.

Dough
200g bread flour
100g rye flour
110g water
10g salt - half remainder of the Himalyan mineral salt and half regular kosher salt

I admit that at first I only put in 100 grams of water. This was a watch and wait because the first time I ended up putting in 125 grams of water at this stage. With 100 grams, the dough seemed a bit dry, so I added a bit, 10 grams, and then it was fine. All depends on the hydration percentage of the starter, other ingredients, and humidity. Better to add slowly than to regret.

Patience is a virtue for a reason.

Mix, cover. Do two stretch and folds. Mine were each a half hour wait.

Are you going to rise already?
Patience, like yoga I, is a set of lessons I need constant refreshing in. I put this dough into the freezer overnight. Without looking at it, without even considering to look at it, I put on the oven and popped the dutch oven right in to preheat. Well, 10 hours in the fridge is not nearly sufficient. Dough was expanded about one third of the way, but flat.

Turned off the oven. Rested the dough on the counter. Waited. Peeked at the dough every half hour or so. I left the dough out for 4.5 hours.

Rising nicely, but not there yet, real life demanded my attention. Sunday walk, Sunday artwork, well Sunday. Put the dough back in the fridge at mid-day. Four and a half hours later, after a walk with a friend: Now that's a dough.

Thank goodness for refrigerators
Dough was ready, but lots of oven traffic congestion and I was way back in the line. Spousal cooking. On the plus side, the oven would be nice and almost sufficiently hot without an extra hour to heat up the oven. Nice spouse allowed me to steal the lower rack to let the dutch oven just sit in the oven as it heated from zero (well, unheated) to fully hot.

After dinner, with 20 minutes to  allow the oven to fully heat up, oven ready. By this time, dough had been in the fridge for another 7.3 hours. Total times below.

Sponge - rest time 9.5 hours

Dough - two stretch and folds, each separated by .5 hour

Dough fermentation - total fridge time of 17.3 hours, counter time of 4.5 hours

Baking preparation - don;t forget those oven mitts
Oven preheated, with dutch oven inside, to 470 degrees for an hour or the equivalent thereof. (I have a law degree and therefore am entitled to use such words as thereof, wherefore, etc.) 

Now for the dance and the extra mental care to remember to don oven mitts at the appropriate time. Also tidbits on an essential tool - rice flour.

1. Have ready: Dough slasher - lame, some water in a cup or bowl, a pastry brush or equivalent, rice flour, caraway seeds (because this is a rye bread, which means I'm wanting those seeds on top even though I completely forgot to mix any into the dough).

2. Sprinkle some rice flour on a board or on the counter. Rice flour is grittier than all-purpose flour, so it is better at preventing sticking of dough.

3. Take dough out of fridge. Quickly, sprinkle a little all purpose flour on and underneath dough so that you can gently lift it out of the bowl. Then, on the rice-flour-covered board, in less than 30 seconds, shape the dough.

4. Quickly - that's the theme - sprinkle water on top of the dough, generously sprinkle on those caraway seeds, and do a cross slash (or fancy design, up to you).

5. Quickly - oven mitts on your hands, open oven, uncover dutch oven, and - yes, quickly - spoon out a nice amount of rice flour to cover bottom of the dutch oven. This will prevent sticking.

6. Plop the dough into bottom of dutch oven.

7. Turn around, put oven mitts back on.

8. Cover dutch oven and close oven.

9. Remember to put on timer for when you want to check the dough. 

10. Congratulate yourself that once again you donned the oven mitts at the appropriate times and saved yourself from a burn. I actually bought super-duper - up to 600 degrees - oven mitts because the heat went through my normal cute oven mitts.

11. Wait

And the reveal
Lovely oven spring. That white flour knows how to promote a rise. Seductive,gorgeous, but not as good for you as a sensible majority whole grain. Total baking time of 49 minutes, though only 44 minutes the first time. 

Excellent taste, winning spousal praise. Makes a wonderful breakfast.

Bread Number 77: A Rye/Flaxseed Meal Virtuoso of a Bread

A top pick
If there is a bread that shows I have learned lessons along the way from bread number zero to 77, this one is it. One word: fantastic. Though I started without all of the ingredients in the recipe from Local Breads, and rejected a couple, my instincts paved the way to an utterly delicious and interesting loaf.

By the way, Daniel Leader, the author of Local Breads, gets a lot of flack in the book reviews about poor editing, inconsistent measures, and bad recipes. One review seemed to sum up the consensus that the book is worthwhile if - and this is perfect for me - the recipes are considered as guides, but not as strict sets of instructions. The reviews also indicated that only the metric weights should be heeded. Another warning was that the bakers percentages are sometimes wholly inaccurate. 

Starting point
I read those reviews after making this bread and as I generally do not strictly follow recipes, all was good in modifying the flax, sesame, sunflower seed, rye recipe. I left out the sunflower seeds altogether and I only used sesame seeds sprinkled on top and not incorporated in the dough. I also added a sponge phase, refused the instruction to do a second kneading, and I did not use a rye starter. So perhaps the recipe was more a starting point than a guide.

Total ingredients
331g water
20g starter 
210g rye flour
290g bread flour
6g caraway seeds (and a bit more to sprinkle on top)
28g flaxseed meal
10g salt
sesame seeds optional for sprinkling on top

Sponge
101g water
20g starter (all purpose flour, not rye) (Used 50g starter for the second try and adjusted other ingredients accordingly.)
100g rye flour

I juggled the amounts of the ingredients so that I could add a sponge phase and to use as much rye as the 60 percent recipe. I used a small amount of starter due to the very warm night, about 80 degrees in the kitchen. This was my first foray beyond 30 percent rye, perhaps on the way to trying a truly dense rye. 

Here we leave the realm of recipe and enter into reality. I was going to let the sponge stay out all night, but I woke up with a start at 2:30 - six hours after making the sponge - and put the sponge in the fridge. The fright took hold that the sponge would be past peak by morning. Once I took it out, and accounting for the warm up delay, the sponge had a bulk fermentation time of 9.5 hours in a pretty warm kitchen. When I made this bread a second time, the dough fermented for about 12 hours, but the kitchen was about 10 degrees cooler.

Dough
230g water
290g bread flour
110g rye flour
28g flaxseed meal
6g caraway seeds (Used 8g the first time, but the caraway might be too overwhelming for some at that amount.)
10g salt
Sesame seeds and caraway seeds - sprinkle on top before baking.

Use what you have
Another departure from the recipe was that I had flaxseed meal and no actual flaxseeds. I used an equal weight and all turned out fine. I also added caraway seeds because I have the misguided notion that it is illegal to make a rye bread without them. That might be the case in Brooklyn. I admit that using a little less caraway for the second try, which was an improvement.

The recipe called for lots of kneading for a rye, so I did half the recommended time. I kneaded for 10 minutes. I also did not add any commercial yeast; the rising time ended up being about two hours longer than recommended. Mine rose for 3.5 hours both times I made this.

Trust your instincts
For about a nanosecond, I followed the recipe instructions instead of my instincts by just starting to sprinkle flour over the wet dough before shaping. A loud voice in my head screamed out "STOP!" as the first glop of dough began to stick to my fingers. Confident that voice was as it continued to instruct using water instead, which worked out much better; no sticking at all. Worked quite well with water the second time around as well.

I sprinkled water on the counter and my hands for a fuss-free shaping and transfer of the dough to a loaf pan. This dough was not going to hold any shape on its own. I also ignored the instructions that this dough should make two loaves and I made one decent-sized, not actually that large, loaf. Cover the loaf pan with plastic, or, in my case, a shower cap.

Baking

Preheat the oven at 400 degrees for an hour while the dough rests. I also preheated the top of the oblong la cloche because it kind of, sort of fits over the loaf pan. The top of the la cloche keeps the moisture in and, therefore, frees the baker from having to throw water or ice cubes into a pan when the oven is burning hot.

At one hour, the dent test passed as much as is possible with a wet dough, it was time for baking. I sprinkled water on top and then sprinkled sesame and caraway seeds. 

Oven time at 400 degrees was 47 minutes, two of which were uncovered. 

For the second go around, I preheated the oven to 450 degrees and immediately reduced the temperature to 400 when the dough went in. Somewhat more oven spring resulted.

Hello beautiful
Next to the word "gorgeous" in the dictionary should be a photograph of this bread. And taste - amazing. Total agreement on this in the household. A top pick, to be sure.

Bread Number 71 - Second Try: Crustier, Airier, and Almost the Same

What happens with the same ingredients, adding stretching and folding
I decided to take to heart a comment on the freshloaf forum to try stretch and folds with rye breads of up to 50 percent rye. Bread #71 came out so well on the first try and I was so curious about adding this dough manipulation that I could not wait to do the bread a second time and compare the results while the taste was still almost in my mouth.

I have to confess to a couple of emergency changes, but the ingredients in toto are exactly the same as the first try of bread #71, even up to the thirsty bag of flour I used the first time and the all-purpose einkorn flour. Well, not exactly, because I had no old bread to soak and add. Almost exactly. What was the emergency - or rather last-minute change? I ran out of rye flour and had to get more, despite my month-before-Passover pledge to use up the flour already in the house. This significantly changed the nature of the sponge, though the same amounts of each type of flour were used, just at different phases. 

And how did this bread - with its stretch and folds - compare to the first try of bread #71? The bread crumb (meaning interior) was somewhat airier with bigger holes. The taste was very close. The crust was better, most likely because I had a better feel for how long it needed in the oven and because I removed the top of the la cloche for the last five minutes to let the bread get some time without being covered. This allowed for a crustier crust and a darker color.

Not a scientist
If I were a scientist, I would have carefully produced this bread, changing just one aspect of the process, which would be to add the stretch and folds. But then I received some marvelous comments on the freshloaf about doing a long autolyse, and how could I wait for another bread to do that? Impossible. So, way before the sponge was done, I mixed together the bread flour and water (too much water, but can perfect that another time) and let it sit, covered, in a bowl, beside the sponge, for a long autolyse.

Just making the same bread twice in a row, I checked the dough and the baking bread less often - not opening the oven door as many times - and let it go uncovered by the top of the la cloche for the last five minutes, giving it a nicer crust.   

Taste, color, and sound?
Answers in order of how one experiences a bread: Sight - beautiful, with gorgeous deep brown crust. Sound - nice crackling sounds. So satisfying. This requires silence in order to hear the very low crackling. Taste - Delicious, very good. Perhaps another experiment would be to use whole grain einkhorn. 

So, yes, not exactly the same recipe, but almost. In an imperfect world of impatience and excited baking, this is pretty much as close to the scientific method as I am willing to get.

*** for the second time, almost, but not quite, the same instructions for bread #71 

Sponge
51g starter
94g water
14g rye flour
99g bread flour

Mixed and covered. Let sit overnight and well into the next day for a total of 17.25 hours because the kitchen is still pretty cold at night.

Autolyse
221g water
133g bread flour

Mixed, covered, and let sit for 4.33 hours, while the sponge became sufficiently bubbly to be considered done and ready to move on to the dough phase. When the sponge was ready, I added the autolyse to the sponge, and then mixed in the dough ingredients.

Dough
92g rye flour
114g einkorn flour (all purpose; still working to finish that bag of flour)
8g caraway seeds
10g salt

Mixed everything together, the sponge, the autolyse and the remaining ingredients. The dough proved tough to mix, so wet hands at the ready, I squeezed and manipulated the dough until it became as it should be, a homogeneous blob.

Stretch and folds
Over the next hour and a half, I did three stretch and folds. The first at 15 minutes, the second 35 minutes later and the last 30 minutes after that. Covered and let sit, in this case for 4.66 hours.
 
Finally, we have sunshine and temperatures in the 50s. Snow is melting, hats are unnecessary, and I could go crazy with carrying my dough elsewhere so that I could tend to it on the go. Not something I do often, but I'm not going to let a dough fail just because I have something unavoidable to do. As it turned out, however, no one showed up for my meeting, and there I was in a room at my synagogue with my bowl of dough, my art supplies, some text and a creepy lonely sensation of being without anyone else in a place that is usually full of people. Like being at Grand Central without a soul; very twilight zone.

I actually did one stretch and fold in the car, paper towel and a bottle of water at the ready, and the last one in a bathroom. In my defense, I have not yet gotten sufficiently crazy that I have taken a bowl of dough on the subway and to my office. I have contemplated it. In the eyes of the law, however, conduct is what counts, not mere thoughts (unless we are talking intent, but then, of course, that is thoughts accompanied by actions).

I took home the dough, examining it every 15 to 30 minutes, to determine when it was ready to be prepared for baking, which my mind always equates with preparations for take-off, though that is completely different.

Baking preparation
When the dough was ready to move on to the next phase of baking preparation, I did a stretch and fold on a well-floured wooden board, covered the dough, and let sit for 15 minutes. That's a good time to clean up a kitchen. I also prepare the basket where the shaped dough will sit for the hour to an hour and a half before going into the oven.

I put a kitchen towel in a small wicker basket and generously sprinkle flour on that regular kitchen towel, so that the dough will not stick to the towel. In this case, I also put caraway seeds on the flour so that the top of the dough would get some pressed into it. When the 15 minute rest period has passed, I shape the dough into a boule, and - important - put the dough, upside down, onto the well-floured towel.  

I have to confess that I have never used a banneton. Curious; just have not yet spent the money.

Rye needs some more caraway seeds just before baking
At one hour, generally, and in this case, the dough is ready to be baked. I cut a nice "X" of cross-slashes on the top of the dough. Because this was a rye bread, and I love caraway seeds on a rye, I sprinkle a generous amount of water on the top of the dough, and sprinkle even more caraway seeds on top.

Oven
One hour before I will put the dough in, I preheat the oven to 500 degrees with the top of the la cloche placed on the baking stone. Immediately upon putting the dough in the oven, I reduce the temperature to 460 degrees. At 15 minutes, I reduce to 440 degrees for the remainder of baking.

This bread took 50 minutes in the oven. At 40 minutes, I removed the parchment paper and at 45 I removed the top of the la cloche.

Musical crackling sounds out of the oven. Wonderful crust. Scrumptious taste.

Bread Number 71: Rye-Einkorn Beauty, But All Purpose Einkorn?

Disaster struck. No beer in the house for the planned second beer bread. Not that there is always beer in the kitchen or in the basement, but usually there is some bottle of craft brew around. I will wait until the spouse buys some; in the pantheon of household tasks, as the beer drinker, he is tasked with beer purchasing. 

So a different type of bread would be made; there was rye flour and rye starter, and the package of einkorn flour that I was curious to open and try.

What do you mean it's not whole grain?
I recently spotted, for the first time, in the local Whole Foods, a store that is a mix of a locally-sourced food emporium and a corporate food behemoth, a package of einkorn flour. Before I set out to work with this flour, I was blissfully unaware that there is more than one type of einkorn flour. Without looking closely, I purchased the "all purpose" variety, a euphemism for a white flour, cleansed, if you will, of most fiber and nutrients. I just assumed it would be whole grain, like everything else in that small part of the baking aisle. Somehow, it seems wrong to sell an ancient grain in a form fit for Wonder Bread.

Ingredients and instructions

Sponge
94g water
39g rye starter
113g rye flour

Mix and cover. This is not a sponge that will get bubbly. Indeed, I find rye starters a bit frustrating because their expansion is so reserved. No need to worry; if you skimp on this phase, more time will be necessary for the dough to rise. Just a matter of when the fermentation will occur.

Dough
221g water
114g einkorn flour
232g bread flour
9g salt
8g caraway seeds (plus more later for sprinkling before putting dough in oven)

Mix, cover, and let rest. This dough rested longer than expected because, I am supposing, I could have let the sponge develop for more time. The dough seemed to be at its peak at 5.25 hours. Nice and big and puffy.

Warning - weird bag of flour makes numbers questionable
My ingredient numbers might be off on this bread, not because my measurements were inaccurate, but because I was working with a King Arthur bread flour package that was especially thirsty. In a bread I make each week, flour from this particular package required a good 50 percent more water than usual, though I always use KA bread flour for this bread.

Also, einkorn flour is said to require less water than wheat. In this recipe, previously using whole wheat instead of einkorn, I generally use 207 grams of water, though for this specific dough, with the weird bread flour package, I used more. I am guessing that with a typical bag of bread flour, from 20 to 50 grams less of water would probably be needed.

Pause - benefit of making same bread over and over
Here I was, making a bread with einkorn flour for the first time, adapting a recipe - bread #27 - I have used about 10 times. I had to feel my way with the water amount because this is not a dough I know intimately. But the reason I could make my weekly challah perfectly even with an extremely thirsty batch of flour is that I know exactly how this dough should be at every step. After 15 years of almost weekly practice, one gains confidence. It was easy to see that the dough needed a whole lot more water. 

So, when trying out a recipe that turns out terribly, do not immediately blame yourself or the instructions. It just might be that one of your ingredients is not acting within the average in some way, thus, throwing off the entire bread. Such a challenge gets easier to spot and rectify with experience.

Pause here for Purim baking
After 5.25 hours, instead of pushing on to prepare for baking, I put the dough in the fridge. I was in the midst of hamentaschen baking for the Jewish holiday of Purim, with a deadline for sending a package to the daughter in college. Needed to roll out the hamentaschen dough, with my grandmother's rolling pin and her yellow baking bowl, and to fill each cookie (pastry?) with fillings modern and old-fashioned. Poppy seed filling, traditional, one daughter's favorite; apricot for my other daughter; and, of course, a universal preference for chocolate.

Morning brain - another pause 
Next morning, instead of trotting off to work, we have another two-hour delay due to ice. Winter this year is reluctant to leave this. As I write, we are expecting not one, but two more storms this week. We are not in Minnesota, here; we should be noticing signs of spring already. 

Because bread is on the brain, I wake up an hour earlier than usual, despite the two-hour delay, and get the bread baked before my usual start of work. 5:45 and I am in the kitchen, brain on autopilot, preparing the dough for baking.

I sit in the kitchen, reading Michael Pollan's Cooked, the part about a perfectionist chef describing a restaurant that operates with precision timing and operations, down to how to load the dishwasher. I realize I am completely deficient on this score. I mostly perform tasks with a "good enough" attitude, or, at other times, I experiment, flirting with failure to move outside my comfort zone. That's what 108 breads is all about. I go for the quirky, but reading at 6 a.m., I feel as though, perhaps, I have never, except for motherhood (where perfection is impossible), reached the point of loving something so much that I take joy in the the consistent performance of a task down to the last detail. 

Maybe it was a little early to be so hard on myself.

Baking preparation
I take the dough out of the fridge, sprinkle flour on a large cutting board, then on top and on the sides of the dough. I do a stretch and fold, cover, and let the dough rest for 15 minutes. 

Shape the dough. Then I put a well-floured kitchen towel in a small wicker basket. I also sprinkle some caraway seeds on top of the flour. Place the dough, bottom up, in the towel inside the basket, and cover. Let rest for an hour.

Preheat the oven to 500 degrees with a baking stone and the top of a la cloche, if you have one. (Otherwise, place a pan on the oven shelf below where the dough will be. Right before after putting the dough in the oven, place a cup of water or ice in the pan. This will provide steam for the dough to rise. The la cloche does the same thing without risk of steaming in your face or ruining the oven. It creates a mini-Roman oven in your oven.)

Thank goodness for parchment paper
I put a piece of parchment paper, that miracle invention, on the baking peel, and, in order:
(1) Turned the dough, right side up, onto the parchment paper. 
(2) Generously sprinkled water on top of the dough.
(3) Threw some caraway seeds on top as well.
(4) Did a quick cross-slash cut into the top after that.
(5) Put the dough in the oven. 

Reduce oven heat immediately to 460 degrees. At 15 minutes, reduce again, this time to 440 degrees. I removed the parchment paper at 40 minutes. Total oven time was 51 minutes, but I should have left it in for another three minutes. Just a tiny, tiny tad underdone.

Isn't that beautiful?
Gorgeous oven spring and a great taste, but I'm a pushover for anything with rye and caraway seeds, despite the all purpose einkorn and the need for a few more minutes of baking. This is why I cannot be a perfectionist. I like this really good bread quite a lot; it doesn't have to be perfect. 

P.S. I received a note saying to try stretch and folds even with rye doughs up to 50 percent, so I will try that next time with this bread and report back here.

Bread Number 70: Celebrating with Beer - in Dough and Otherwise

Just pour the bottle into the bowl
So weird to actually open the beer bottle, in this case, Brooklyn lager, and just empty it right into the dough bowl. Great smell. 

Maybe it was the beer that explains why this dough rose so slowly, or perhaps, it was my unwise use of a just-fed starter instead of having the patience to wait to make the dough until the starter was ripe. Definitely, the cold winter temperatures contributed to the slow rise as well, a total of 27 hours. Mind-blowing, yes, and a testament to my ability to be patient, at least on occasion.

Beer is welcome as a fun way to experiment as I approach the final third of the 108-bread project. Will also taste good to eat the beer bread with beer. I drink about one to two beers a year. An exact level of thirstiness is necessary; somehow, wine requires no such limitations. Of course, for those for whom any beer will do, this might seem like an alien attitude.

Two more breads - number 72 - until I hit the two-thirds mark. My daughter tells me to plan a celebration for 108 and immediately a party at a bakery or a bakery tour come to mind, closely followed by the idea of a bread-maker gathering. Or maybe just a quiet breakfast of homemade bread, nice tea or coffee, and some fine music, Sinatra, perhaps, and something good to read. I like my bread that way. 

Ingredients and instructions

352g beer
70g starter (120 percent hydration, with big qualification; details below)
100g whole wheat flour
16g flaxseed meal
20g rye flour
389g bread flour
11g salt

Autolyse
Mixed all flours, flaxseed meal and beer (love writing that word in this context), covered, and let sit for 30 minutes. 

Dough
Added starter and salt. Mixed and covered. Did two stretch and folds, the first at 15 minutes and the second another 15 minutes later. Covered and left out overnight. 

This was Oscar night, which I totally enjoy. Two reasons: Commenting on dresses and listening to thank you speeches. Warms my heart to hear appreciation for parents, spouses, and opportunities, as well as curiosity about what political outbursts celebrities will engage in. Since I do not read People or pay much attention to celebrity culture, the Academy Awards is the perfect dose.

Starter and long, long rise
Though this recipe includes a healthy amount of starter, 70 grams, I do believe the exceptionally long rise of 27 hours was partly due to the state of the starter and not only to the winter temperatures. Instead of feeding the starter and waiting for it to get all exuberant again, I began with impatience. I fed the starter, adjusting it to a pretty high hydration percentage - estimating 120 percent - and put the almost just-fed starter into the dough. I waited only a half hour in a 65-degree kitchen.

I thought the rise would occur overnight because the outdoor temperatures had increased considerably; we were up to the 30s or 40s. I suppose, however, that the kitchen was nearly as cold as ever in the wee hours. By morning, the dough had hardly expanded. I went off to work, leaving the dough in the heated kitchen, with adult offspring in the house. Called this adult, who sweetly tolerated her mother, and texted a picture of the dough. It needed more time, so I took the chance that the hours would be too many until I returned home from work and asked for the dough to be left out.

Kitchen heat turned off, then six hours later, turned on for the evening. Returned home, immediately checked dough, but did not look fully ready to cease bulk fermentation. Left dough out until bedtime and then put it in my heated closet. As I was bringing the bowl through the bedroom, spouse noted my increasing bread craziness. Woke up at 12:30 a.m., and carried the dough to the refrigerator. Finally, it appeared ready, but this was not my time to move on to the next phase.

Tending to the dough
The next morning, I shaped the dough, without even a stretch and fold. Placed the dough on a well-floured kitchen towel and put it in a small wicker basket. Covered and left in fridge for 12 hours.

Returned home from work and preheated oven, with top of la cloche and baking stone inside, to 500 degrees for one hour. I took the dough out of the fridge immediately prior to baking, stopping only to put a nice set of cross slashes into the top of the dough.

Baking
Left the temperature at 500 for 20 minutes, then reduced to 470 degrees. Total baking time, 51 minutes. Lovely oven rise that only a majority white bread flour dough will produce. Divine crackling sound emanating, hissing practically, from the just-done bread. 

Incredible, great taste with a hint of the beer. I never would be able to identify the beer taste if I did not know there was beer in the bread, but the taste had a different twang than a long rise sourdough - a more complex, maybe a two-layered, twangi-ness. And twangy is not a technical term, yet.

Next up: plan to eat the bread with beer: A big yum, I'm sure.