Horse Bread

I

I called this horse bread  due to the fact that a number of the ingrediants are easily obtained from stockfeed stores catering for the horse people. There was some discussion on the availability or lack of Molasses in another topic on TFL. For this bread i got my daughter to pick up 2 litres of molasses from the rural store when she was picking up her bales of hay for the nags.

The molasses comes in one of those 1,000 litre bulk plastic containers that is on a pallet in a steel frame which is then decanted into smaller containers as required. cost was $A 5.20 for the 2 litres, i could have sourced my Barley there too but already had that from a bulk providor in Fremantle. These 2 ingrediants are firm favourites with horses hence the connection to Horse bread.

I started the barley off to produce sprouts by soaking for 24 hours in water  and then straining off the water, i tend to keep the grain in the laundry and each time i pass by i  dunk the sieve into water for a few minutes and  allow to drain again. After the 4 days the sprouts are progressing well and ready for use.

For the preferment  I used 250g stone ground wholemeal flour with 250ml of home brew coopers dark stout and 125mls of sour dough starter that was diluted to half strength and allowed to ferment over night. In the morning i added a further 450g of bakers flour 14g salt and 100ml of mollasses the dough was quite sticky but not overly wet at the completion of the mix i then incorporated 100g of the sprouted barley this was then allowed to bulk ferment for 3 hours in corporating 3 x stretch and folds.

i divided the dough into 2 parts 1 i tinned up and placed in my car to prove in the autumn sun the other i handed up and placed in a cloth and bowl and placed in the fridge for a retard and bake off the following day.

The first dough went into the oven at around 14.00hrs

the 2nd piece went into the oven the following day at 09.00.

This dough was a bit of a trial run for the sprouting of the grain for a bit of a baking session that fellow West Australian and  TFL member Rossnroller and i are going to have  next week  when we will use the WOOD FIRED OVEN  and a bigger dough

it was easier to call this HORSE BREAD rather than 36% wholemeal  64% white sour dough with stout molasses and sprouted barley.

All that tried it liked it, although next time i would probably 1/2 THE MOLASSES  as it was rather powerfull other great additions would be dried figs, dates and walnuts the texture was very good and moist and quite malty and has great keeping qualities

so the top 3 pics are the same day procedure the others are the retarded portion.

Regards YOZZA