Attack of the Ancient Aliens
Ancient alien theorists have long thought that the wee beasties found in SD are really tiny aliens brought here long ago by more complex and intelligent space traveling ancient aliens. Lucy is a firm believer in these theories and has one of her own.
She is positive that the gel that forms when chia and flax seeds are soaked, turns them into an ancient alien gel mass that may not be very good humans to consume. So she always specifies that chia and flax seeds be toasted in a dry pan until smoking, then ground and then baked at 450 F.
She thinks that this ensures that these potential evil aliens are really dead and can’t take over humans from the inside. I am a bit skeptical about the whole thing though. I’m not sure that frying grinding and baking really harms these aliens at all and really wouldn’t mind being taken over by aliens.
The idea of taking over the world when the world is so screwed up as it is a compelling to say the least and idea of punish those who screwed it up in the first place is even more appealing. But hey, it is bake day and we can’t be diverted from it no matter how nice the theory sounds.
This bread is a 25% sprouted 10 grain and 36% whole grain bread. The remaining 64% is bread flour. Overall. hydration is 76%. The add ins were 2% pink Himalayan sea salt, 2% red malt and 20% total chia and flax seeds in equal amounts. The toted and f=ground seeds were hydrated separately in twice their weight in water and this water was not included in the recipe hydration.
The levain was a 3 stage, 100% hydration, 12 hour total, whole grain rye one using 10g of the last of the NMNF starter which had 10% pre-fermented whole grain rye flour. Once the levain was built it was retarded overnight. The next day we did 4th stage using the 5% bran sifted out from the sprouted 10 grains.
We stirred the 3stage rye levian down, added the sprouted bran and equal amounts of water and let the levain sit on the counter for 1 hour until it had risen 70%. During this hour we autolysed the remaining high extraction sprouted and bread flour with the dough water and salt sprinkled on top.
Once the levain hit the mix was did 30 slap and folds to mix it all together followed by 2 more sets of 8 slaps and 3 sets of 4 slaps – all on 20 minute intervals. We put the seeds on to gel for the autolyze and the first 3 sets of slap and folds. By the time they hit the mix on slap and fold 4 they had really set up to max gel stage and we hope the aliens were all dead by then.
Once the slapping was done we pre-shaped and shaped the dough into an oval and dropped it into a rice floured basket for a 20 hour cold retard in the fridge. Once we saw it the next morning it was past 100% proofed but rather than reshaping it and letting it proof again, we decided to bake it straight out of the fridge cold, slashed and baked on the bottom stone with Mega Steam using lava rocks.
We preheated to 500 F and slid the bread in on parchment for 2 minutes of steam at 500 F before turning the oven down to 460F for 16 more minutes of steam. When the steam come out we saw the dough had puffed itself up a bit, rounding itself, but didn’t rally bloom which was expected. We turned the oven down to 425 F convection and continued baking for another 23 minutes until the center was 208 F.
I smelled seedy for sure and we look forward to it cooling just in time for lunch sandwiches and a crumb shot. It sure tastes seedy enough! Yum. Made a fine Genoa salami sandwich for lunch too. Very soft and moist crumb and open enough for a bread with some much add ins getting in the way. Very tasty indeed - we like it a lot!
Comments
That looks too good. You tease us Dabrownman. I'm sure this can be classed as a breach of human rights.
Porn Artists of all kinds? Maybe there should be one.......This is a nice bread that is fairly healthy too. Won't have any problem eating it all up over the next few weeks. Glad you liked it too.
Happy baking Abe
Well, at least i like the look and the sound of it. Looks like it did exactly what it was supposed to do. Beautiful crumb. I'm sure the taste is very special too.
How long has it been since you fed your NMNF starter?
I love Lucy's theory on aliens! LOL! Chia gel is actually a bit creepy, so she may be onto something.
Happy baking!
longer. Usually I take a bit and make another starter with it after 8 weeks so when I get around to using it it s at least 12 weeks old but I forgot to do this last time. I love the twice a year maintenance schedule - no muss, no fuss is the perfect solution to most of life's problems especially if you are an ET Alien Seed Gel !
This bread made some killer toast this morning - yum.
I love ribs and with that bread, I am seriously dying of hunger. Thanks for letting us know how much water you used to soak your chia and flax seeds. I am going to bake my own version of your apple prune bread that you made a few years ago. My plan was to soak them in twice the water but I wasn't sure. So this confirms my thoughts. Thanks!!!
weight in water - which is why they probably came here. Not too many planets around with this much water and a dominate species so easy to control :-)
I have found if you use too much soaking water with these water hogs, they will sop it up but put too much back making for a damp crumb instead of a moist one. Not enough water and it makes the crumb too dry.
Good luck with the apple prune bread. It sure sounds like something Lucy would come up with - she is addicted to prunes... among so many other things.
Glad you liked the bread and happy baking Danni.
Apple Cranberry instead of Apple Prune. I soaked the chia seeds in one and a half time their weight but they don't seem to be soaking up the water as readily as usual. I wonder if the toasting had something to do with that. As well, they didn't grind up nicely like the flax seed when I put them through my mini chopper. I don't have a coffee mill since we don't drink the stuff. I am sure everything will turn out tasty no matter what. Well having said that, I might end up with a brick. I think I am due for one... Just right when I have company coming...,
delicious! How did it turn out?
along with flax sunflower seed loaves and a last minute kamut white whole wheat 1-2-3 mini loaf. I am baking later today.
Murphy, does not strike. I do like apple cranberry cake as well as bread. A fine dessert for friends coming over. Cross your fingers.....poor Murphy got a bad rap.
The view from under the bus is something you get used to. :)
Hi, dabrownman! Let's see you try another red malt with the Mrs. around! :) I'll keep Lucy company for you...
Murph
what to cook tomorrow (actually it's already today) for the lunch - I wanna make ribs like yours and will enjoy the bread I brought home - the original Country loaf from Tartine bakery and Dark Mountain Rye and Country loaf from Josey's "The mill". After coming home my wife was eagerly waiting to try some Dark Mountain Rye bread and it was really great. I knew in advance she will like it. The recipe is in Josey's book.
Tomorrow I will also invite my neighbors for a small tasting experience as we need to consume that bread quickly because the Tartine loaf was baked already on Wednesday. I am sure that the ribs will just fit perfectly together with all that bread.
Regarding your bread, nothing to add to other comments, just perfect and would like to taste your ribs on your bread. I like the crumb which is just enough opened but without big holes so this is really a very nice sandwich bread.
Have a nice weekend and happy baking, Dab
Breadman. His recipes fit Lucy to a tee and he reminds me of a younger me only better without the bad stuff we don't talk about anymore for fear of prison and vigilantes:-)
Where I come from, the home of all things ribs - KCMO, Wonder Bread was always served with BBQ so the Tartine sorta white bread would be perfect with ribs. I'll never forget, nearly 30 years ago, we had a couple over for ribs one night. The guy said that he had never had anything so good in his life.
I told him that there wasn't any good BBQ in Phoenix but that his comment was why the food critic of the NY Times said the 50 best restaurants in the world are all BBQ joints in Kansas City. We take our smoked meats seriously for sure. If we don't have some kind of smoked meat every week my skin starts to crawl with the heebejeebes and Lucy bites everyone's ankles.
Have fun at your BBQ - they will love the bread nearly as much I am sure,
Glad you liked this bread and happy baking joc.
Here are my ribs, I don't make them the way you do - so I don't use any sugar or honey and other stuff which is usually used. I just use smokey rub and some other spices and salt. For first 20 minutes I smoke them and then it takes several hours - usually 2 to 4 to finish them.
These were really good and our neighbors were delighted to eat them together with the bread I brought from SF. Of course, we had some very good almost "organic" red wine from one of the wine regions in Slovenia.
Have a nice weekend Dab.
All those rib pictures! We might have to start a rib forum around here!
are better than anything else you could make:-) The wine sounds wonderful as well. No wonder the guests love the dinner! Just found out I'm making dinner for the fiance's parents this coming Friday. The request of for smoked ribs and chicken thighs but I'm also going to make smoked salmon too for a surf, turf and scratch ensemble with the usual sides of bourbon, beer and wine:-)
Hi, dabrownman!
Another fun post - bread be damned! Thanks, friend! But the bread DOES sound delish! I like your writing better, though! :) I simply can't get over the fitty-cent Easter baskets. That's just the coolest thing! :)
So let's see whatcha got... sounds like you have 36% whole grains, 25% of which is sprouted, right? You emptied out the pantry and found 10 different grains to shove in there which is VERY cool and dear to my frugal sensibilities. I like that you have so many bits and pieces lying about AND that you can tie it into an alien thing. It's clear that you've been doing this for a bit.
I like that you kept the soaker separate and didn't bother to calculate it into the recipe. Very laid back and exactly how I like it. I would expect nothing less from you! :) Retired... Jealous!
I'm figuring somewhere close to an 800 g dough at 15% levain. Am I catching on?
Man, I love reading your posts. Thanks for taking the time to share and even going the extra mile to post pictures! Very, very gracious. Can you spare a shot of your lava rocks One Of These Days?
Murph
in this recipe there would be 360 g (36%) of whole grains in it. Since sprouted grains are whole grains they make up 250 g (25% of 1000 g) of the 360 g of whole grains in the total mix. The rest of the whole grains are the 3 stagelevain - the whole grain rye or 11% of 1000 g of flour total or 110 g of rye in the levain. So, the 110 g of rye in the first 3 stages of the levain plus the 250 g of sprouted grains totals 360 g of whole grains or 36% of the 1000 g of total flour.
The 4th stage of the levain was the sifted out hard bits of the sprouted grains. We love to put the bran in the levain when ever we can. It is this sprouted bran for the 4th stage that makes the pre-fermentd flour 15%, or 150 g of the total 1000g of flour. So 150 -110 = 40 g of bran was the 4th stage of the levain. Since there was 250 g of sprouted flour total we know that the extracted hard bits, 40 g, in the 4th stage of the levain was a 16% extraction (40/250) and that 210 g of sprouted 84% extraction (210/250) 10 grain flour was left over for the dough flour.
I did mis-represent this bread though. There are really 9 grains sprouted for thios bread. The 10th grain is flax, Chia is a flowering herb in the mint family so that makes this technically a 9 sprouted grain, flax & Chia herb bread. I didn't specify the 9 grains and figure folks will just sprout the ones they like for have on hand if they want to make a similar bread. The 9 grains sprouted in this one were red and white wheat, spelt, rye, buckwheat, oat, barley, emmer and Kamut.
Look for the lava rocks in a metal pan next Friday but here are lava rocks in Pyrex pans. Glad you liked the post Murph. This was some kind of fine alien gel bread.
Happy baking
If everything's ready here on the Dark Side of the Moon... play the five tones.
Lovely bake, lovely ribs. Stop torturing us, will ya!
I just asked my daughter if she knew the 5 tones of the Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind and she looked at me like I was crazy and said I have no idea what you are talking about. Kids! I had to play it on youtube for her. Nothing like meeting aliens at Devils Tower. 5 tones, ribs, bread and beer is all we need to make aliens our friends and win a free vacation that is out of this world.
I'll have to ask my daughter if she knows the 5 tones. She is 28 so she might. When did that movie come out anyhow?
this must be an alien bread since the crumb even changed colors from brown to yellow! wOw!
it must taste as good as it looks too and the ribs....mmmm tasty!
Hapy Baking from the East Coast gang
sunshine makes everything turn a bit yellow! The indoor photo isn't the right color either. Here is the real color
Lucy sends her best to all her furry cohorts stranded on that Long Island!
Happy baking Ian
That looks more like it :) Would look even better on a bed of ribs and smoked chicken though!
We're finally getting some football weather this weekend....was 50 degrees this morning when I walked Lucy's friends and only going to be a high in the mid 60s.
Those Buffalo Bills from NY! We are still peeved about missing the kick to lose to the Patriots at the end of game 1. Only 94 F here today and pretty much the rest of the week. Fall has arrived and the tomatoes are in! Will probably plant lettuce tomorrow so we can have fresh greens for Thanksgiving.