Purim and Sprouted Westfalian Rye

Steven Hawking came out this week to say that humanity is doomed.  He says that we will kill ourselves by letting our future robots, that we create, take over the world and kill us off because……. we are too stupid to stop it.  My question is - Where has he been?  People have been predicting this and writing extensively about it for decades – not to mention all the movies made about it.

This morning I was watching a burger flipping robot in Japan on the business channel and a concrete house being 3D printed in 24 hours in Russia.  Just think what jobs those fools in Silicon Valley are working so hard at doing away with next.  I predict that the very first Trans Humans will be found in Silicon Valley.

Oddly, once all the jobs have been replaced by robots and people dwindle away…. there will be no need for the human job doing robots we created – unless the robots think of something else for them to do.  Something nefarious I am sure.  Maybe they will save other worlds from living beings who are destroying their plants too.  Aliens everywhere better watch out for our robots….. who will be searching the galaxy looking for them …….to save their planet from them.  

All I can say is, I can’t wait to see the robot that can handle a 70% rye, 30% sprouted 6 grain dough at 90% hydration – no more Lucy or any other Baking Apprentice 2nd Class needed ever again.  I told Lucy that no people means - no pets.  You can bet that pets are going to be gone long before we are once robots refuse to feed us.  Now I feel a lot better leaving a $20 trillion national debt to my 25 year old daughter with no job to pay it off – Whew!  It was keeping me up at night.  Off to bread baking this week.

With Purim coming up Lucy whipped up a few hamemtashen using an enriched bread dough found here that was retarded for 48 hours.  Inside the Jewish Bakery has a.  We made 3 kinds. Black raspberry, blueberry and ginger, strawberry and banana and finally fig spread.  These are not the pie dough kind of hamentashen.   Using half the dough, we made a fig, pistachio and pepita roll up cocktail loaf that we plan on using for French toast this weekend.

We also made the Westphalian rye bread described above.  It has a bran 6 grain, 2 stage levain made from 10 g of NMNF starter.  The sprouted grains were: red and white wheat, rye, spelt, Kamut and barley.  It also had Black Toad beer, a whole 12 fl oz bottle for most of the dough liquid.  For additional dark color Lucy added some espresso powder, cocoa, molasses and barley malt syrup.  Ahe also put in some walnuts, figs, prunes and caraway seeds.

We autolyzed the dough flour and liquid for 1 hour and then did folding in the bowl and slap and folds on half hour increments to get the add ins mixed in well.  2 ½ hours after mixing by hand we dumped it into an oiled Oriental Pullman pan and let it rest for an hour before putting it into the fridge for an 8 hour cold retard.

When we took it out of the fridge it had not risen one iota since it hit the pan 9 hours before.  We figured it would be a very long day waiting on this bread to rise after being so cold for so long.  Once it was warmer outside than in the kitchen, we took the bread there to warm up faster and finish proofing it was supposed to be over 80 F today.

After 8 hours of warming up and proofing we had to get it in the oven before the wife got home so in it went ready or not.  I estimated it had risen about 80% - not too bad but it wasn’t cracking on the top either.

We decided that we would bake this one a bit different.  We brushed the top with the rehydration liquid to stick some pepita seeds to it, slid the lid on and put it into a cold oven and then turned it on to 450 F.  Instead of steaming for 20 minutes we steamed for 15 minutes after the oven hit temperature.  Then we took the lid off and continued baking 50 minutes at 385 F.  Then we took the bread out of the an and baked it on the rack for another 10 minutes until the temperature read 202 F.

We will have to wait for 24 hours to see what the inside looks like.  This is some kind of yummy rye bread.  Open and moist on the inside and powerfully delicious.  A slight sweetness and subtle caraway aroma and taste.  Tis bread can stand upt to any powerful filling or be perfect toasted with a schmear for breakfast.  It is a meal in itself.

Nothing like a nice grilled shrimp, grilled: red onion, orange and red bell pepper, poblano pepper, crimini and button mushrooms, green bean, broccoli, asparagus, grey squash, sausage, bacon, hot pepper jack, Parmesan and goat cheese fritatta.

Recipe

SD Levain

100% hydration, fresh milled, 12% sprouted, pre-fermented bran & high extraction, 6 grain flour, 2 stage levain using 10g of NMNF rye starter that was retarded for many weeks

Dough

18% sprouted, 6 grain high extraction flour

70% Fresh milled, whole grain rye.

90% Black Toad beer, 1 bottle, and a splash of water to get it to 90%

10% each black mission figs and prunes dry weight -  rehydrated and water squeezed put

10% walnuts

4% caraway seeds

2% each cocoa, espresso, barley malt syrup and molasses

2% Pink Himalayan sea salt.

This bread is 30% sprouted whole grain, 100% whole grain and 76% rye.

Lucy reminds us to have a salad now and again - like every day!

She is a cutie!