Taking a page from Ian, lessons from Hamelman and trying to keep my bakes straight

 It's been awhile, and this entry is more to try and keep track of what's been baked lately.

After my third shot at the Hamelman five-grain, I went back to my usual formula, but adding the Hamelman-style hot soaker. One of the loaves actually made it down to Burgundy, where spring had put in an early appearance, as in all of France that week.

Taking a page from Ian

Finding myself with a batch of overcooked brown basmati rice, I decided to try adding some to my dough, along with a grain and seed soaker. And because it seemed a natural thing to do with basmati, I also grated in some fresh turmeric, which gave the dough a lovely color and interesting perfume. I made two loaves, but never got to taste any, since grandson was not only heading off to Brussels to see his girlfriend, but also down to Lyon to see his brother. He was kind enough to send a crumb shot and to describe the crumb as "dense, but voluptuous". So, thanks Ian!

Revisiting an old friend

Many months ago, Abe taught me how to make a do-nothing bread, and it was one of those midweek, off-the-cuff bakes. I added a handful of seeds, but cannot for the life of me remember if I added a soaker. Probably not, since I was unsure of what would happen to it during the overnight, room-tempertaure bulk ferment.

Which brings us to this weekend's bake.

Camargue red rice with multigrain seeded soaker

Since I never got a chance to taste the rice loaf, I made some extra Camargue red rice a couple of nights ago, and actually wrote down what I was going to do:

130g of 3-stage 100% hydration WW levain, starting with 10g of rye seed at 66%

100g of cooked Camargue red rice

Soaker:
65g toasted multigrain flakes
20g flax seeds
15g nigella seeds
110g boiling water
2g NaCl

320g T65 bread flour
200g T150 whole-wheat flour

364g water

10g NaCl

I was curious as to what a "young" levain would do, compared to the usual "mature" one, so I did the first build on bake day -2, and made the soaker in the same evening. Sifted the bran out of the whole wheat (came to about 12g), and added it to the soaker, with 9g of water (that I forgot to deduct the next day when making up the dough!).

Bake day -1, built the second stage before heading to work, then stage 3 when I got home. Let that bubble up for about three hours, made the dough, mixed in the levain and let it sit for an hour or so. Then added the soaker, rice and salt. The dough felt lovely before adding in all of that stuff. Lots of pinching and folding before a long session of SLAFs.

Two sets of STAFs half an hour apart, then into the fridge (about 3:30am) for an overnight snooze.

(And while I was waiting around, decided that I'd also make a batch of yogurt cake with a tweak; I'd read somewhere that it was possible to swap out yogurt for starter. Since I had a little levain left over and a small handful of semolina that was bugging me, I made up 130g of semolina levain and put it aside.)

On bake day, removed the dough from the fridge and let it warm up for about three hours, turned it out onto the counter and did a pre-shape, 45-minute bench rest and final shape. Coated the loaves in seeds and plunked them into their baskets. The dough had been quite cold, so I reckoned that the final proof was going to need some time. I did remember to stick a small lump of dough into a little container to keep an eye on the rise.

In the meantime, made up the yogurt cake batter, then dithered about whether I should bake the cake first (which had the advantage of heating the oven partway and providing desert), or hold off on the cake until the bread was done, whenever that would be. Opted for the former.

Oh, the suspense! Would the cakes be baked and the oven heated up enough before the bread overproofed :-D

This batch made a dozen and a half of these little cupcakes; they were supposed to include toasted walnuts, too, but I ate them all while I was making the batter. And I simply forgot to sprinkle over spme flaked almonds or blond cane sugar… oh, well, we ate them anyway. The sourdough added a nice flavor to these apple/prune yogurt cupcakes.

The loaves finally went into the oven when the little lump of dough had risen by about 25%, I'll try going for longer the next time.

The flavor of the rice really comes through, especially when the bread is toasted. Crumb is soft and moist, crust is a little chewier than usual, but good. It'll be interesting to see the shelf-life of this loaf. One of the things I love about the soaker, aside from the flavors, is the fact that the crumb stays soft the whole week. Amazing.

Next stop, CedarMountain's fermented oat soaker!

While I was building the levain for this bake, CedarMountain posted a gorgeous loaf using a fermented soaker, adding
a bit of starter to a "standard" hot-water soaker. I'll try to keep notes this time!

Two questions

Can anyone help me figure out the hydration of this loaf, based on the numbers above? I get all befuddled when there's a soaker involved.

I have two sets of baskets, both of about equal width; one is about 24cm long, which works quite nicely for loaves of about 700-750g of dough, and a pair of smaller ones that work well with about 500-550g. These loaves were in the neighborhood of 630g and could have been smooshed into the smaller baskets, but I decided to give them room to grow and used the longer ones. Would proofing in the shorter baskets have forced the bread to rise higher once it hit the oven?

Just realized: my starter is a year old this weekend! Thanks, Debra Wink!