Multi-hypothesis bread

I've had a string of failures with my bread recently. They just don't rise much, most of the time - once or twice they rose nicely, but most of the time they're kinda flat. Not inedibly flat, mind you, but flat enough that they aren't very enticing, not that great for things like french toast, let alone bread pudding. I have a number of hypotheses of why this could be, but rather than trying them meticulously one at a time and keep making uninspiring bread, I decided to throw them all in at once, check that I got something that works, then go from there.

So I took my standard bread recipe (except I see now I've been using 3 eggs most of the time where this post said 2, as did my older 1:1 bread post) and made the following changes:

  • In case the yeast has too little starch to feast on: Drop the flax seed flour (which has a rather strong taste also) and increase regular flours instead.
  • In case the walnuts contain something inhibiting the yeast: Drop the walnuts
  • In case the eggs weren't whisked enough to aid in fluffiness: Before adding the oil, but after adding water and yeast, whisk until fairly foamy.
  • In case the yeast ended up in clumps that can't get enough food close by: Knead the bread for a full 10 minutes (I had gotten lazy on the kneading, partly after reading about Nathan Myhrvold's findings that kneading didn't matter much).
What I ended up with:
  • 50 g seed mix (sunflower, flax, pumpkin, and sesame)
  • 150 g white wheat flour (type 405)
  • 150 g whole wheat flour
  • 80 g gluten
  • 130 g sunflower seed flour
  • 1 tbsp salt
  • 3 eggs
  • 20 g yeast (block, not dry)
  • 365 ml luke-warm water
  • 25 g oil
Put the seed mix in a small bowl and pour boiling water over it. Set it aside.

Mix together the flours and salt in a LeKue bowl (this dough is too wet to knead directly).

Whisk together eggs, yeast, and water, whisk it till foamy. Add oil and whisk a bit more.

Add liquids to the flours, then drain the seed mix and rinse it in cold water and add that, too. Mix it all well, then knead for about 10 minutes. Cover with a warm wet towel and let rise in a slightly warm place - a oven with just the oven light on is perfect. After the first rise, "punch" it down by dropping the mixing bowl on the table from about 20 cm. Prepare a loaf pan, then knead the dough some more, maybe 3-5 minutes, before dropping it into the loaf pan. Cut slits in it (I like a wheat-stalk like pattern) to allow it to rise without splitting. Leave it under the warm wet towel for a second rise, then bake in a 200C oven for 1 hour at the lowest rack.

The rising time is an interesting factor. For this bread, I did a 45 minute first rise and 45 minutes second rise. After the first rise, the dough had risen a lot and was quite stringy - could probably have been a fine "artisan" style bread if baked directly then. It rose again in the second rise, but seems to have collapsed again (I was away during baking), and wasn't super fluffy. I think 30 minutes first rise would have been better. There definitely was not problem getting the dough to rise, though!

The dough was quite wet and never formed together as a ball. While this can still work (see Toke's splat bread), it definitely requires different treatment. I might want to reduce the water, especially since the three eggs and oil add more liquid, too.

I did like the taste I got from using sunflower seed flour instead of flax seed flour, plus the bread is not as grey. It might have been a bit on the salty side, the right amount seems to be roughly 2 1/2 tsp.

Comments

  1. Unknown17 September 2018 at 11:49

    "splat bread". Has a nice ring to it an it is quite telling. Should it ever need a new name, that would be it.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My Ikea Hack Workbench

Image
I needed a new workbench. One where my printer could live, where tools and spare parts could be organized, but also where the work surface wouldn't get cluttered or take too much of the space in my room. I started looking around at secretaries and similar, which have the right concept, but never the right size. Eventually I realized I had to do it myself. These are my notes. I used an IKEA Hemnes side table, two Hemnes night stands, and the top part of the two-part Hemnes writing desk. The two night stands on top of the side table, and the writing desk part on top of them, like the cross slab of a megalith, done in wood plank furniture. That part was simple enough, except I didn't want the gaps under the night stands, so I cut a bit of the logs, but cut too much, so now I need to fill some gaps. I'll probably print something eventually. But here's the basic setup: Hemnes, Hemnes everywhere. But they are clearly not designed to go together like these, the sizes don...
Read more

Bullet Journals Without the Pastels

Image
Late last year,  +Riona MacNamara  introduced me to the idea of  bullet journals , and I decided to give it a try over Christmas. It worked out for me and has seriously helped me getting shit done, without a snowfall of post-it notes to keep track of things (I have graphs and data to back this claim up, see the Statistics section). There are  many   pages   describing   bullet   journals , most of them showing intricately decorated journals done in pastels. If you're allergic to pastels, or don't have time to decorate your planner, here's my explanation. Guaranteed no florals - hell, I can't even do a straight line. Task Tracking Here are the three parts of my bullet journal I use the most, the task tracking parts. It has three levels: generic future tasks roughly by month, tasks for the current month, and tasks for today. The  future tracker  is where you keep tasks that you want to get around to eventually, but either don't have t...
Read more

Almond flour isn't just almond flour

Image
Looking around on the internet for how much almond flour to use instead of regular flour, I kept finding big variations, from 1:1 replacement to 1:2. Since baking is fairly finicky with the amount of ingredients, this confused me. But when I grabbed an extra bag of almond flour at the local grocery store (yes, there are specialty flours at the grocery store here), I noticed a difference in consistency and decided to take a closer look. Here's a close-up of the two flours using a macro lens. On the left is MeaVita Mandelmehl, on the right Borchers Premium Mandelmehl. In both cases, I've used a blunt instrument to gently distribute the flour to better see the difference. The flour on the left, the MeaVita brand flour, is in much larger chunks than on the right. The MeaVita flour also feels more moist, though I don't know if that's a direct effect of the size or because more oil has been extracted from the Borchers flour. It is, however, obvious that the two flour...
Read more