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Inspired by one of Ilya's recent posts about a rye bread, I decided to try a recipe from Maurizio Leo's site (The Perfect Loaf) for a rye bread with some seeds.  The night before the bake I prepared the levain, which consists of mature starter (47 g), rye flour (234 g of King Arthur White Rye Flour), and water (234 g).  At the same time I put roasted unsalted sunflower seeds (65 g), roasted unsalted pumpkin seeds (65 g), and whole flaxseed (30 g) in a bowl and added enough hot tap water (214 g) to submerge the seeds.  Both the levain and the soaker were covered with plastic wrap and left on the counter overnight.

The next morning the levain had tripled after about twelve hours.  First I put water (322 g) into a large bowl and added the levain, which I stirred until it dissolved.  To that I added dark rye flour (176 g), spelt flour (176 g), sea salt (12 g), and the soaker (after draining through a mesh sieve).  I used a dough scraper to mix everything, which had the consistency of cake batter, took the temperature (75 F), and then covered the bowl and let it sit for a half hour.

Maurizio used a Pullman loaf pan in his bake, but I don't have one of those and instead used a 9"x5"x3" loaf pan, which I sprayed lightly with oil.  Using a spatula, I then scooped the dough into the loaf pan, smoothed the top, and covered the pan with plastic wrap for the proofing.  After ninety minutes the dough had risen to about a half inch below the rim, and I then put the loaf into a 400 F oven that had been steamed in my usual way (lava rocks in aluminum pie pans).

After thirty-five minutes I reduced the oven temperature to 350 F and then continued the bake for another ninety minutes.  In the meantime the loaf rose nicely and took on a dark brown color.  A crack formed around the upper perimeter just below the top crust (something Maurizio mentioned in his description of the recipe), but was more cosmetic than anything else.  By the end of the bake the internal temperature of the loaf was 209 F.  I put the pan on a cooling rack for a little over an hour and then removed the loaf, which I weighed (1215 g) and then wrapped in a tea towel and left on the counter.

Maurizio says to leave the loaf wrapped for 24-48 hours to avoid having a gummy crumb from slicing too early.  I opted for about twenty-five hours and then curiosity got the better of me.  Here is the loaf after being unwrapped.

Here are two photos of the crumb.

The bread has a crisp crust and is easily sliced.  The crumb is moist but not gummy.  The seeds provide a nice addition to the flavor of the three different flours.

This is an extremely simple bread to make and offers a lot of flexibility.  You could vary the types of flours and types of seeds and really play around with the possibilities.  The presence of white rye and spelt makes the crumb lighter than a totally dark rye bread and is not dense at all.  Consider this bread if you are looking for something that combines rye and seeds.

Has anyone baked the little dough used for gauging fermentation? 🤣 This is my baby dough (sitting on a teaspoon) from today’s sourdough cheese-stuffed fougasse (adapted from Maurizio’s) - this lil one took 18 minutes to bake. 

There were also baked potato skins with butter chicken filling and ..

.. my test bake: 6” lemon blueberry cake with walnut crumble. Usually whole berries are tossed in flour and folded into the batter but I wanted to see what happens when the batter is tinted with the fruit. This time the pigments changed slightly during the bake with blue most intense on the skins. As suggested by Benny, maybe I should use a lil bit of *ascorbic acid when working with such pigmented fruit. 

The lemon cake is tasty on its own without any other fruit inclusions. No syrup for this cake today since I’ve a crunchy walnut crumble on the top. 

6” lemon cake

• 130g all purpose flour 
• 5g cornflour
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 60g sugar
• Zest from 1 lemon
• 30g unsalted butter
• 20g light olive oil
• 1 large egg
• 60g fresh lemon juice
• 60g milk
• 1/2 tsp lemon extract
• Optional: mixed berries tossed in flour 

 Blueberry reduction (for swirls/batter)

• 150g blueberries 
• 40g sugar
• 1 tbsp water
• 2 tsp lemon juice
• Zest of 1/2 lemon 

 Walnut sugar topping 

• 30g chopped walnut, untoasted
• 15g sugar
• A pinch of ground cinnamon
• A pinch of salt
• 15g unsalted butter 

*For canning and dehydration of fruit/vegetables, it’s suggested that the cut fruits/vegetables be soaked in a solution of ascorbic/citric acid for about 3-5 minutes to prevent discoloration/oxidation: 1500mg to 1 cup of water. I’ve to test this method followed by a 180-200°C bake. :)

My sourdough adventures this past week were to make potica rolls (essentially cinnamon rolls that used a tangzhong) but I substituted levain for the instant yeast. 

My other bake was for anadama bread which I also converted to sourdough and made about 80% whole wheat. I milled the corn myself for the corn porridge and it was a really tasty loaf - will definitely make again. 

Remembered that my bag of beremeal is expiring next month, so used it for these two loaves. Very small inoculation with recently refreshed refrigerated rye starter. Here is the formula: https://fgbc.dk/1ikg

Fermentolyse 30 min
Add salt and a splash of water, mix in and knead with slap&folds until medium development.
40 min rest, then folds.
1.5 hrs rest, folds.
Let rise at 27C until ~60% growth (~7 hrs?), gently preshape, 30 min rest, shape and refrigerate overnight.

Dough was very nice to work with, and I think I fermented it in bulk nicely: ~60% growth since last fold (in a straight-sided container, not aliquot jar, so very approximate)

Boule went to a friend, so only the crumb of the batard:

Nice nutty taste from the barley, good crust, soft crumb. Not sure how to avoid the cracking, even with only 15% barley the batard got a couple big cracks (boule got a lot of scores, so didn't crack). Maybe I should try next time wetting the surface before baking, like with rye bread?

I have a lot of rye berries in stock and I haven’t used a lot of it lately. So a rustic light rye was in order for this weekend. My inspiration is from this site: https://heartbeetkitchen.com/rye-sourdough-bread-recipe/. I changed just about everything in the recipe method wise except for the proportions of ingredients (Note that I did add yogurt and upped the salt to 1.8%). Hopefully my loaves turn out as well as the original recipe. 

Recipe

Makes 3 loaves

737 g of filtered water

760 g strong baker’s unbleached flour

200 g freshly milled rye flour

112 g freshly milled Selkirk flour (whole grain wheat flour)

42 g honey

30 g whole milk yogurt (locally sourced)

22 g pink Himalayan salt

250 g levain (procedure in recipe)

Extra rye and unbleached flour

The day before:

1. About 8 hours before bedtime, take 2 g of refrigerated starter and feed it 4 g of filtered water and 4 g of wholegrain rye flour. Let sit in a warm spot. 

The night before:

1. Mill the Selkirk and Rye berries if using, on the finest setting of your mill or measure out commercial whole grain rye and whole grain wheat flour if you don’t mill your own.
2. Place the required amount of each freshly milled flour in a tub and add the unbleached flour to it. Cover and set aside.
3. Feed the levain 20 g of water and 20 g of wholegrain flour. Let it rise at room temperature for the night.

Dough making day:

1. Feed the levain 100 g of filtered water and 50 g of rye flour as well as 50g of strong baker’s flour. Place in a warm spot. Let rise until doubled (about 4-5 hours). The levain is a fairly stiff one due to the freshly milled rye flour even though it’s 100% hydration. 

2. About two hours before the levain is ready, using a stand mixer, mix the water with the flours, and mix on speed 1 until all the flour has been hydrated. Let this autolyse for a couple of hours.

3. Once the autolyse is done, add the salt, the yogurt, the honey and the levain to the bowl. Mix on speed one for a minute to integrate everything, then mix on speed 2 for 9 minutes. 

4. Remove the dough from the mixing bowl and place in a lightly oiled covered tub. Let rest 30 minutes in a warm spot (oven with light on).

5. Do 2 sets of coil folds at 30 minute intervals and then 2 other sets at 45 minute intervals, and then let the dough rise to about 40-50%. It should have irregular bubbles visible through the sides of the container and quite a few large bubbles on top as well. 

6. Tip the dough out on a bare counter, sprinkle the top with flour and divide into portions of ~725 g. Round out the portions into rounds with a dough scraper and let rest 30 minutes on the counter. I was surprised that this dough was not sticky considering the amount of rye in it. 

7. Do a final shape by flouring the top of the rounds and flipping the rounds over on a lightly floured counter. Gently stretch the dough out into a circle. Pull and fold the third of the dough closest to you over the middle. Pull the right side and fold over the middle and do the same to the left. Fold the top end to the center patting out any cavities. Finally stretch the two top corners and fold over each other in the middle. Roll the bottom of the dough away from you until the seam is underneath the dough. Cup your hands around the dough and pull towards you, doing this on all sides of the dough to round it off. Finally spin the dough to make a nice tight boule. 

8. Sprinkle a mix of rice and all purpose flour in the bannetons. Place the dough seam side down in the bannetons. Let rest for a few minutes on the counter and then put to bed in a cold (38F) fridge overnight. I try to keep this between 10 and 11 hours. 

Baking Day

1. The next morning, heat the oven to 475F with the Dutch ovens inside for 45 minutes to an hour. Turn out the dough seam side up onto a cornmeal sprinkled counter. Place rounds of parchment paper in the bottom of the pots, and carefully but quickly place the dough seam side up inside.

2. Cover the pots and bake the loaves at 450 F for 25 minutes, remove the lids, and bake for another 22 minutes at 425 F. Internal temperature should be 205 F or more.

I’m quite happy with the look of these loaves. We will see what the crumb is like when we cut into one. 

I enjoy same day bakes but I think impatience got me on this chocolate+espresso + butter toasted oats swirl loaf (adapted recipe from bake-street.com) Guess I was just eager to see how the swirls turn out. ;) Still the entire process was rewarding, especially the smells from baking this (the extra espresso powder, butter toasted oats, yum)

The next swirly bake was a mix with discard, mashed potatoes, some strawberries.. This morning, I decided to find out the water content of the strawberries I have despite websites telling me they might be 85, 90, 92%.. I figured I’m gonna just use the purée instead of water for my dough. Two samples, 3 hours at 95°C later I got my readings and it’s 91.3%. So, I made the recipe: a potato+sd discard dough and a strawberry one. This is what came out of my little experiment. I figured my 5g lemon juice may not be enough to keep the brightness of the red or maybe the purée should’ve been reduced to 1/3 to concentrate the color OR I’ll just make strawberry powder instead.

That said, I must redo these two bakes. 

Anyone here with experience keeping strawberry bright red enough in a bake before?

The list of bakes from other TFL'ers I want to do keeps piling up, so I decided to start trying a few of them.  First up on the list was Benny's swirl milk bread.  Didn't execute it as well as the master, but didn't come out too bad for the first attempt.  :-)  Followed the method exactly as outlined in the post link below.  Only change...  I did not have black sesame seeds, so opted for black chia seeds.  I couldn't find a purple sweet potato, but I found a Garnet yam, and the color from the yam held nicely.

https://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/67840/purple-sweet-potato-black-sesame-swirl-sourdough-milk-bread

Overall, the bake went well.  Had a bit of a blowout on one side.  Looks like I might have rolled the white dough a little too thin in that spot.  The only real trouble was the chia seeds.  I didn't realize how much water they absorbed, and I only had about half of them in when the dough became unworkable.  I started to add water back in, and then realized that chia seeds are "mucusy" too.  Turned into a slimy mess.  But...  slowly but surely got enough moisture back into the dough to make it pliable and workable.  So, my black is more of a charcoal gray, but the flavor is good!

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I hope I’m not boring you guys with these swirled milk breads, but the flavor combinations seem like endless possibilities.  This one is a great combination that you’ll find in any good bubble tea house.  Something about matcha and anko just go so well together.  The anko (red bean or azuki bean paste) is homemade and I’ve been gradually making my way through the batch I made weeks back.  It freezes and defrosts very well so if you’re interested in making some don’t worry that you’ll have to use it up all at once.

Overnight levain build

14 g starter + 86 g cold water + 86 g bread flour left to ferment at 74ºF overnight.

Take butter out when build levain.

For the Matcha paste

Mix 8.5 g Matcha 25 g sugar and 10 g water until smooth, cover and set aside until the morning.

The next morning mix the following except for the butter.

282 g bread flour

1 large egg

30 g sugar

126 g milk

6 g salt

180 g levain 

Separately mix your room temperature 30 g butter with 30 g bread flour and put aside.

Using a standmixer, mix until incorporated at low speed.  Then mix at higher speed until gluten well formed.  Then gradually add the flour butter mixture and mix until the dough is elastic, shines and smooth.  Because we premixed the butter with flour this step of adding the butter will go very quickly.

Remove the dough from the mixer, shape into a ball and divide into approximate thirds.  Shape the largest third into a boule and set aside covered with a towel.

Take the smallest third and combine with the anko and knead by hand until the anko is well incorporated.  Shape into a boule and set aside under a tea towel.

Finally take the third dough ball and using the mixer add the matcha paste and mix until well combined.  Shape into a boule and place under a tea towel to rest for 5 mins.

Lightly flour a work surface and the plain dough boule.  Roll out to at least 12” in length and almost as wide as the length of your pan, set aside.  Continue to do the same with the other two balls next rolling the black sesame dough out to 12” and placing that on top of the plain rolled out dough.  Finally rolling the anko dough out again to 12” and finally placing that on top of the black sesame dough.

Roll the laminated three doughs out to about 16-18” in length.  Next tightly roll the laminated doughs starting with the short end until you have a swirled log.  Place the log in your prepared Pullman pan with the seam side down (I like to line it with parchment so it is easy to remove from the pan).  Place in the proofing box set to 82-84ºF to proof until the dough comes to approximately 1 cm below the edge of the Pullman pan.  This takes about 8-8.5 hours at 82ºF, the yeast isn’t likely to be osmotolerant so it will take longer than you would normally expect.

At about 30 mins before you think your dough will be at 1 cm below the edge of the pan, preheat your oven to 355ºF with a rack or baking steel/stone on the lowest rack.  At this time prepare an egg wash and gently brush it on the top of the dough.  When the oven is ready 30 mins later, brush the top of the dough again with the egg wash.  Bake for 45 mins turning once halfway through.  Keep an eye on the top crust and be prepared to shield it with either aluminum foil or a cookie tray above if it is getting dark too soon.  After 45 mins remove from the pan to check for doneness.  Place the bread back in the oven for another 5 minutes to ensure that the crust on the sides is fully set and baked.

Remove from oven and place on a rack to cool completely before slicing.

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Tried a new method on a standard bake for me with the best results so far (on the outside anyway).  Beginner's Luck?  Will have to see if I can repeat it.

When it comes to folds and shaping, I kind of feel like I'm all thumbs.  When to fold?  Which fold to do?  How hard to stretch? How hard to degas? Which pre-shape? Etc.  Skills I need to develop, but I'm not very consistent yet.

I started doing this technique, and it just makes sense to me.  I can feel when the dough starts to change.  So for this bake, I used this technique, but spread it out over 9 hours.  Rather than worrying about how my gluten is holding up and what fold I should do to keep it built up, I just kept slowly developing it as fermentation progressed, and the end of the 4th set was my pre-shape.  From there, the concept follows Dan's Simple Loaf Pan technique.  Place in banneton or pan and let it ferment till 90+% on the aliquot.  You can let it go that long because you fully degassed and punched it down during the 4th set of kneading.  Technique probably won't produce an open, lacy crumb, but I'm usually looking for an airy, sandwich crumb anyway. 

Both of these loaves were for a friend, so no crumb shot.  Asked to have one sent, and will post it if I get it.  By far the best oven spring I've got in both loaves.  Free standing is 15% WW.  Pan loaf is 15% rye.  Formula is for the WW, but just swap out the WW for rye on the other loaf.  I did the exact same method.  Prepared both loaves side-by-side last night.  Friend wanted one free standing and one pan loaf.

This is a variation on Chad Robertson's Oat Porridge Bread in his book Tartine 3. It is essentially the same bread but with slightly less oat porridge and the addition of some cooked whole oat berries. It is one of my favourite breads.

Ingredients

• fresh milled organic Red Fife flour, sifted (80% extraction)  20% (200g)
• organic unbleached all purpose white flour  80% (800g)
• filtered water  78%  (780g)
• sea salt  2%  (20g)
• levain (4 hours)  25% (250g) 
• organic rolled oats, cooked  30%  (300g)
• organic whole oat berries, cooked  7.5%  (75g)
• flaked almonds  2.5%  (25g)

I did a 1 hour autolyse before mixing in the salt and levain, The bulk fermentaion was about 5 hours at room temperature, 30% rise; a series of stretch/folds was done every 30 minutes for the first two hours with the oat porridge, cooked oat berries and flaked almonds added after the second series. The FDH after additions was probably around 80-82%, by feel.  I separated the dough into two loaves, rested them for 30 minutes and then did the final shaping.  The loaves were cold proofed overnight for about 12 hours in linen lined wicker baskets with some rolled oats sprnkled along the sides of the loaves ( I like to leave the tops of the loaves bare to show the crust colour).  

The loaves were baked directly from the fridge in a pre-heated oven, covered pots, 500 F for twenty minutes, 450 F for ten minutes and then finished out of the pots directly on a baking stone, 19 minutes.