50 % Whole Grain Sprouted 8 Grain SD/YW with Japanese Black Rice & Seeds

Lucy originally set out to do her take on combining Karin’s take on Maria Speck’s Aroma Bread and Karin’s Great Wild Rice bread.  Both of these breads are on our favorite list and on Lucy’s top three breads for various years.

But Aroma means aromatic seeds like caraway, anise coriander and fennel but you won’t find any in this bread because we forgot to put them in.  But, don’t let this keep you from adding them in your version.  With or without the bread won’t know the difference even though you might.

This is also our fist sprouted flour bread with lots of add ins in it too.  We subbed Japanese Black rice for the wild rice since, while still expensive half the cost of wild and nearly as tasty.  We sprouted some black rice too and put it in whole instead of grinding it into flour like the rest of the whole and sprouted grains.

Besides the BR, the other 7 grains were” Hayden Mills emmer (farro), spelt, rye, wheat, Kamut, Pima Club and Sonoran White from Ramona Farms.  Whole grains were 50% of the mix and half were sprouted and dried in our new dehydrator.  The white flour was KA bread flour.

We sifted out the hard bits and fed them to the SD 3 stage levain build and then retarded it for 24 hours in the fridge.  We also made a small 1 build, 12 hour, YW levain of 50 G that we made the next day which was ready in time for mixing it into the dough. 

We thought this dough would be on the heavier side with 200 G of seeds in the mix and a YW kicker should help open the crumb some even if on the small side.  We omitted the autolyse this time and just mixed everything together with a spoon and let it sit 30 minutes before the slap and folds began.

Even though the hydration was only 80%, the mix was still sloppy due to the Ramona Farms, spelt and black rice being in the mix.  It finally quit sticking to the counter during the 2nd of 3 sets of slap and folds 2ith the first one 8 minutes and the next 2 1 minute each.

We also did 3 sets of stretch and folds and each of the gluten development manipulations were done on 40 minute intervals.  The sesame seeds, sprouted Japanese rice, flax seeds, pumpkin and sunflower seeds were added during the first set of stretch and folds and they were thoroughly incorporated by the end of the 3rd set. 

Because of the cold we kept the dough in a SS bowl 0on a heating pad during the gluten development.  We skipped the bulk ferment and immediately shaped the dough, placed it in a rice floured basket, bagged it and retarded it for 12 hours.  After a 3 hour warm up on the heating pad, we fired up Big Old Betsy to 500 F and put in the Mega Steam.

We upended the basket on parchment on a peel, slashed it and slid I on the bottom stone for 20 minutes of steam at 450 F.  We then removed the steam, turned the oven down to 425 F convection and continued baking another 25 minutes until the temperature read 208 F wj=hen the oven was turned off the bread left on the stone till it hit 210 F and was removed to a cooling rack.

The dough bloomed and sprang well under steam, became a  deep mahogany color and smelled seedy in a good way.  We like everything about it so far and hope the crumb is a as nice when we slice it for breakfast toast in the morning,  The crumb wasn't as open as the same bread without all the add in seeds and black Japanese rice sprouts but it was open enough not to be too dense. We thought that the YW woild do a better job of opening the crumb but we thought Lucy would be a decent bread baking apprentice too:-)

The crumb is just full of good tasting seeds and now we wish we wouldn't have forgotten the aromatic ones.  In any event, this is a fine tasting bread and will be perfect with just about any kind of meal this week.  It is a welcome change from the no added bits in the crumb  breads we have been making of late.  Lucy reminds us that she is really going to be watching us bread people this year to pick her breads of the year for 2015!