dabrownman's blog

The bottom iof the loaf shows the true color of this bread

Our daughter found out yesterday morning that she passed the national PA certification test.  Yea!  Now she can get a job and start the rest of her non-school life.  We could not be prouder of her.   All the hard work she has put in through college and the PA school has finally paid off and now she can make her own way in the world and follow her path to where ever it leads her.

Instead of spending 5 days making a loaf of bread this week Lucy and I made a batch of Red Rye Malt - which takes just as long -5 days.

All you have to do is sprout rye berries or about 4 days or so until the shoot, not the 3 rootlets that come out first, is at least as long as the seed itself.  The rootlets will be 5 times that long by then.  Then you dry the malted berries over about 5 hours at 105 F.

For the 123 challenge bake we chose to do a polish for the 1, NF milk for the 2 and bread flour for the 3.  We also used 10% butter since these are supposed to soft tolls and enriching them is the way to go.  We did not put any sugar in the mix as some would do to make the rolls sweeter.  A pinch of insant yeast was all it took to get things rolling.

Lucy isn’t known to be a died in the wool bread traditionalist and I am anything, and everything, a bit strange in an odd and slightly weird way since being born 2nd to my twin and losing the first race I ever ran.  Being a born loser can wear on you over time, if you let it, so you might tend to compensate by being a rebel and not give much, if any, respect to the establishment, rules and the status quo.

We gone for a few days in Texas our daughter’s graduation from PA school at UTMB.  She did very well graduating with honors and awards so we rented a Jamaica beach house in Galveston to celebrate with her, family and friends – there were a dozen of us.

Risking being struck by lightning from the Dark Side, Lucy came up with another white bread this week.  This one was bit different since it had 20% pre-fermented flour – in the summer – twice as much as usual.  It also had a 1 hour bulk ferment before shaping and no retard of the dough two additionally unusual processes.

2016 Dabrownman’s Blog Index

1/1/2016 - New Year’s Eve Pizza – 2015

1/5/2016 - Westphalian Pumpernickel – 1537

1/8/2016 -  3 Starter Italian Olive Bread with Rosemary and Sun Dried Tomato

As you know, Lucy’s definition of white bread is very specific.  Anything less than 50% whole grain flour is a white bread.  This one, depending on how you classify it, is a white bread at 38% whole grains or a 70% sprouted whole grain bread.

After seeing David’s sourdough white bread post this week, poor Lucy got the willies for it worse than ever.  When you don’t eat much white bread, the ramifications of missing it can be dangerous when the White Bread Willies strike.  I tried to get Lucy back on her trans humanist project since the sun burns hotter every day and it won’t be long before the oceans boil away and we need to be permanently somewhere else – not that she isn’t most of the time anyway.

Many folks don’t know it but Nelson not only was a great man who brought freedom and liberty to his country but he was quite a bread guy too.  One of his most famous quotes was ‘Let there be work, bread, water and salt for all.’  But it didn’t stop there.   He lived on bread and water in prison for years and his favorite folk tale was ‘How Hlakanyana Outwitted the Monster which featured a stolen loaf of bread.