Yeast water seed and nut bread
Have been loving the yeast water.
I've recently made Hamelman's Swiss Farmhouse bread from the community bake. So interesting and it surprised me that my somewhat fizzy water has such great leavening power.
Since there was leftover yeast water from making the CB bread I wondered what a yeast water bread would taste like without the raisins and if it would still have as strong a raisin flavour to it. And I do like what seeds and nuts as inclusions bring to a bread, so made this loaf, replacing the walnut and raisin inclusions with 50g of a seed mix of my own (pumpkin, sunflower, brown and golden linseed, sesame) and another 50g of nuts (almonds, pecans and walnut).
Other than that most of the method followed was as per Hamelman's recipe. The nuts and seeds were laminated in. This time around the fermentation, although lightning fast compared to sourdough was slower than with the Swiss Farmhouse, possible because of the lack of raisins. Bulk fermentation was 2.5 hours and final proof just shy of 2 hours, with the aliquot showing 120% increase at the end. With the original recipe the aliquot grew even larger - to 167% and perhaps I should have let it raise even higher, but still learning what I can get away with with the yeast water!
I did err on the side of caution and popped the banneton into the freezer while the oven was warming just in case the dough would spread when it came out. I never know how long you can get away with the freezer for, but it seems to be longer than I expected and up to an hour has been fine. For this bread it was around 50 minutes.
Taste was exceptional. The pecans really came through (most of the nuts did, actually). There wasn't a raisin taste either, although there was certainly no sour taste as you'd get with sourdough. It was especially lovely to eat with a nut butter, but we went to town and also tried it with avo, a 'Labneh' cream-cheese and Speculoos spread.
So I had two different kinds of raisins that I tried. Ended up using the jar on the left which had the larger raisins made from Hanepoort grapes. Raisins are seeded and still have stalks.
Comments
Well done. I've made this a few times now and enjoy the taste. Like you observed, there was a distinct lack of sour taste. I've used walnuts in my bakes, but I'll try pecans next time.
My first effort at raisin water didn't work as the raisins had an oil coating, so I made it from cumquats from the backyard. The next attempt I made using organic raisins without any coating worked a trick. Here's a link to my second bake: Swiss Farmhouse Bread bake No.2 | The Fresh Loaf
Cheers,
Gavin
Lovely crumb on your bread Gavin and I probably need to get an airlock lid too since I've continued keeping the raisin water.
Cheers,
Jon
That’s one beautiful loaf Jon! I love the mix of both seeds and nuts you’ve added. It must really taste great.
I’ve kept my grape yeast water, it’s still in my fridge since the CB from 2 years ago. It doesn’t have a special lid on it. I wonder if it would still work to quickly seed a new fruit yeast water? That is of course, the reason I’ve kept it. It certainly hasn’t become moldy.
Benny
Worth a try, if only for curiosity's sake!
It does beg the question then what you're going to feed the yeast.
I know someone who feeds his YW with barley malt extract (in a 1:10 ration with water). I've just been feeding mine with more raisins and water.
I was planning to eventually revive it with more organic grapes since the original was made with grapes. I will do this at some point.
Benny