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Marcel's Grandmother's Spelt Bread (1)

Marcel's Grandmother's Spelt Bread (2)

Marcel's Grandmother's Spelt Bread (Dinkelbrot)

We had a German exchange student stay with us for a couple of weeks recently. Marcel is about 17 years old, and we hit it off great. He shares an interest with me and my oldest son and daughter, who are about the same age as Marcel, in physics, math, computers, and music. He is one of the nicest, most polite young men I've met. One day I was making some sourdough bread in my kitchen, and I noticed Marcel paying very close attention to the process. He then mentioned that his grandmother, who lives with his family in Germany, frequently bakes breads, and he is a big fan of her breads. We quickly discovered that bread was another of our shared interests. He described going to a mill near his village and buying spelt flour and rye flour of a coarseness specified by his grandmother for her breads. What a difference from buying over the internet, as I tend to do here in NJ. So, I asked if he could recite some favorite recipes for me. He then got on the phone with his grandmother, and she emailed us two recipes, one of which is described here, and one will be described in a separate blog entry (potato bread). We had quite a time translating German baking terminology into English for my use, including struggling with the word edelhefe and with correct translations of some or the names of spices. Also, there was some confusion over methods of handling the dough, but eventually, I felt I had enough information to try these recipes. When Marcel returned to Germany, he also forwarded to me some photos he took of his grandmother's process.

I have photos of my process for this bread and the potato bread recipe. Since I did both at the same time, there is an intermingling of the two breads, but I hope it will be clear what is going on with each bread.

Marcel's Grandmother's Spelt Bread (Dinkelbrot) Recipe

Ingredients:

• 800 grams whole spelt flour (I used Heartland Mills Spelt Flour)
• 500 grams warm water
• 16 grams salt
• 2 tsp anise seed
• 2 tsp caraway seed
• 1 cup nutritional yeast flakes (edelhefe in German, I used KAL brand)
• 1 packet active dry yeast (1.5 tsp instant yeast)
• 1 tsp honey
• shelled, roasted, unsalted pumpkin seeds or sunflower seeds (I used pumpkin seeds)
• butter for greasing the loaf pan

Autolyse and Yeast Proofing

Mix water and flour in bowl until flour is hydrated, and set aside for 30 minutes. Mix a small amount of flour with 1/2 cup of warm water, yeast, and the honey. Let sit for about 1/2 hour until it foams up. When I did this, the foam about doubled or tripled in volume and was very foamy.

Mix and Knead

Mix in salt, spices, nutritional yeast flakes, the contents of the cup with the yeast, flour, water, and honey and mix in mixer or by hand. I found the dough a little dry at this point, so I added just a touch of water to facilitate mixing the ingredients. The dough was fairly stiff but somewhat sticky, even after the addition of a small amount of water. I kneaded it for just a couple of minutes to fully mix all the ingredients and to bring the consistency to more like a dough. The recipe Marcel's grandmother gave me doesn't specify any kneading at all. I suspect that is correct, and that I should actually have just stopped after minimal mixing, based on a photo she sent me of what the dough looks like after mixing. Mine rose more than hers appeared to, and I think the bread may be meant to be a bit more dense than what I came up with doing what I did here.

Put Bread in Loaf Pan

I greased the sides of a 9 inch glass loaf dish with butter and sprinkled pumpkin seeds onto the butter. The seeds barely stick to the sides, but they do stay in place. I then formed a stumpy batard, which I shaped in much the same way that JMonkey did in his whole wheat bread shaping video. Again, I may have done more shaping and kneading than was intended based on the pictures, as I look at them in retrospect. Marcel's grandmother has a picture that I now see may have been more significant than I thought where she simply dumps the dough straight out of the mixer and into the loaf dish. I believe there is less kneading and mixing intended by Marcel's grandmother than I did in my version here.

Bake - No Preheat

Slash the loaf down the center, and place the dish in a cold oven and turn the temperature to 400F for 90 minutes. The bread rises nicely as the oven preheats. I forgot to slash the loaf, so I tried to do it after about 15 minutes. The crust was already forming. You can see the result from the pictures, which is not all that pretty. Sorry, it would have worked beautifully to slash before putting it in the oven, even though the oven started out cold. Oh well, I'll do better next time. The internal temperature of the loaf was about 205F after 90 minutes, and the crust was quite thick, hard, and dark.

Cool

Allow the loaf to fully cool. I dropped it out of the dish and let it cool on a rack.

Results

The crust that results is delicious. This bread tastes just great to me, and I generally have a big bias toward the flavor of sourdough breads. However, this yeast raised whole grain bread was just delicious. I realize I must be missing out on some wonderful breads in my baking life by not paying enough attention to German breads. Thank you Marcel, and Marcel's grandmother for sharing this wonderful recipe, for sending me photos, and for spending a lot of time and effort translating and explaining the ingredients and procedures that I was not familiar with.

Yesterday morning I started a batch of my basic all white SD dough. I had meant to include some white ww and a little rye for flavor but I was having a senior moment and so today we are enjoying white sourdough. I have been experimenting with varying the amount of starter in the batch to effect the final consistency. I find that the smaller the amount of starter I use, the more slack the dough is when it's time to form. With that in mind one could simply add more flour to stiffen up the dough but in my experience the condition of the starter is not a stable value so my thought is that I should learn to adjust the amount of starter based on how healthy it is at the moment to arrive at a consistency I can work with.

Today I am using 50g of active starter to rise 1100g of AP flour (Harvest King) at 65% hydration which works out to 710g of water. This is double the amount I have been using for this bread. The usual 2% salt is 22g. I mixed all ingredients in a bowl by hand and frisaged on the counter, gathered into a ball and let it rest for an hour covered.

After the rest, the dough is smooth and elastic. I now get to enjoy the maneuver I feel is the single most helpful in the kneading step, the French Fold. In just a few moments of French folding one can transform a slack untrained mass into a well formed and tensioned dough. There used to be a video here showing this maneuver but alas I think it was taken down by the poster. Anyway the bulk ferment is planned for 12 hours in the oven with the light on.

Dividing, shaping, PAUSE 10 mins, and shape into boules for the final proof of about 1 hour. With a little creative cutting of parchment I can manage to get two boules in the oven on a cookie sheet. I boiled a cup of water and placed it in the oven alongside the dough. After an hour, I pulled the water glass, slashed and baked from cold at 425F for 30 minutes + -.

The dough spread like a turtle and I feared I would be submitting these as "out takes" but to my constant surprise the oven sprung as advertised and all is well after all.

Eric

And got a nice bit of baking out of the way since Monday. I re-activated my starter on Sunday afternoon and started making some doughs on Monday morning. The boules I had done on Tuesday, but wanted to see for myself if a longer fermentation really did result in blistering of the loaf. So..I retarded the doughs for the olive and pepper/cheese loaves in the fridge from Monday until this morning (wednesday) and cooked em off after forming them last night. AWESOME! Totally got the blistering I love so much. Here's a little chronicle.

The starter activated

Gloppy dough before I kneaded...

After the kneading...

The top and crumb...

and the proofing and cooked loaves of the olive and pepper/cheese bread

Starter A and Starter B departed this earthly plain yesterday afternoon after a brief and uneventful life.  After a short memorial, they were buried at sea.

Having wiped a tear from my eye (maybe if was just flour dust), I decided that just because these 2 starters didn't take doesnt' mean that I need to stop the experiment.  So, before the disposal had stopped running, I mixed up 2 more batches of starter.  These are being called Thing 1 and Thing 2 (I'm a Dr. Seuss fan).  They are a 30/30g mix of rye flour and water.   This time I covered both of them with a damp rag instead of cheesecloth hoping that they won't dry out.  Thing 1 resides on the refrigerator, and Thing 2 is taking shelter in a dry spot outdoors so it doesn't drown during our current rain storm.

Today is day 2, so I gave them both a quick stir and put them back in their places.   Tomorrow will be their first feeding.......we'll see what happens. 

In spite of all the good advice, I have messed up again.  This loaf overproofed and no one suggested that I brush egg and milk on the top before baking. I thunk that up all by myself! It looks kind of nice-

Sourdough NK #3

Sort of like the Mexican pan dulces we ate as kids, but don't you believe it!  Each of those little chunks in the mosaic are suitable for paving the driveway. And the crumb-

Sourdough #3 crumb

Just a few little worm holes, twisting and turning like, well never mind what its like. I know I can do better. In the mean time I'm going to do some reading and get a bit of theory in my noggin instead of mucking around like, well never mind what I'm like.

This weekend I baked a loaf that used to be a family favorite and always is successful. It is a soft white bread recipe that is punched down once and then pinched into walnut sized pieces, dipped in garlic butter and layered in a tube pan. I added sauteed chanterelle mushroom and green olive muffuletta between the layers with the italian herbs and cheeses.

Herb Bubble Loaf

Herb Bubble Slices

This is a recipe that was featured in a magazine (I think Regan was in office!). After several weeks of baking breads with long fermentation, the bread seems bland. I would recommend substituting your favorite bread recipe and adapting it to the technique.

My goal; to improve upon the Sourdough No Knead ala JMonkey and Susan adding only the overnight proof in the refrigerator and hopefully improving the "nice slashing on top". The result; I managed to bake a couple of weird looking loaves with unremarkable crumb. I thought I would make two batches of no knead testing the old starter against the new starter. In my mind any differences would be incremental. Wrong.

The new rye and grapefruit culture doubled so quickly that I had to fold and form it last evening and put it into the refrigerator. The other batch was just sort of sitting there so it stayed out to ferment at room temperature overnight. This morning it still didn't look puffy so I put it into the 85 degree place. When I next checked it, it was overproofed, of course. Now I know what folks are talking about when they say their dough became soup. I poured it out onto the board and began CPR when it probably should have been DNR. About half a cup of flour and a sprinkle of instant yeast later it was formed and went into the refrigerator.

I slashed loaf one in a crosshatch as carefully as I could. Here's a pic in which it doesn't look too bad-

Sourdough NK view 1

And here is a more accurate representation-

Sourdough NK view 2

I feel lucky it didn't blow the door off the oven! For all that oven spring, the crumb is plumb unremarkable-

Sourdough NK crumb

Slicing really improved the appearance of this wacky loaf. It is soft and chewy with a crackley crust that only requires hand tools to slice! The flavor is nice and sour but not as complex as the older starter. They all say it gets better with age.

This is another in my series of large boules of whole grain sourdough. I may have finally found a way to make a crumb to complex. Using perhaps more rye than I should have, this is a little more dense than I like but still flavorful. My wife made me a tool to create a round slash for the top. She is an artist with all the skills to make what ever tools she needs for sculpting or jewelry making. I was doubtful that it work but alas, the proof is here for all to see. I'm resisting the call for a polka dot pattern (artists are a demanding lot).

Today I will be starting some Tomsbread 100%WW. I think I have decided that it is better from the standpoint of flavor to to use fewer types of flour and therefore develop a more distinct taste that can be identified. The same is true in European style cooking. Some of the best dishes I make are simple distinctive flavors that stand out on their own. Pizza is a good example I think and Focaccia with a little olive oil and tomato/balsamic vinegar topping. Or maybe a slice of Ciabatta dipped in expensive olive oil. Mmmm delicious!

After looking at several other blogs showing amazing sourdough results, I'm feeling really envious!    My starter experiment is dying a slow, horrible death. (If figures that the 3 other starters I have took off in no time at all, but the one I share with everyone tanks!!)   I fed the starters again trying a reduced amount of flour and water to see if anything will change.  If not, I'm going to toss both of them and start over.

I did have a bit of success with my original starter, Boris, this weekend.    I was able to get a batch of English muffins and a couple of loaves of bread baked on Saturday.     I still can't get big open holes in the muffins, but the crumb on the bread was pretty good.

I began my sourdough journey last week on the 16th. My starter was active on day 2, died down and remained quiet until day 6. I fed it over those two days to make sure it was alive and kicking and it looked great. each time with in feeds it doubled even trippled and I decided yesterday that I was going to start my first sourdough loaf. I followed reinhearts baasic sourdough from BBA and put the starter (biga type I dont know the word) in the fridge over night. Took it out this morning, and began my permentation. I was so excited to see it grow to much. after 4 hours it had doubled in size and I was very happy!

I then shaped the dough into 6 torpedo rolls and one boule. I proofed the boule in a ceramic bowl in a plain teatowel covered in lots of flour. It came out of the mould with ease and everything came out very brown but very nice.

The loaves are half wholemeal and half white flour. They taste slightly tangy and smell good.

To be honest I am still worried I am growing something other than yeast in there and am very wary about eating my beautiful looking and smelling bread. Yes, I am paranoid. ;P

Here is my starter as it is now :)

and here is it closer

And my very first sourdough loaves!

thegreenbaker