dabrownman's blog

From the last whole grain multigrain SD bake with seeds and scald here:

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/35130/whole-multigrain-sd-bread-scald-seeds-and-more-aromatic-seeds

 we held back 60 g of the final dough before the scald was added to make some pizzas.

Continuing our merry end of the work weekly bread bakes, we kept to or recent 100% whole grain multigrain bread formula inspired by Karin’s recent challenge.  The twist this time was to limit the whole grains to Kamut, wheat, spelt and rye since we ran out of farro (einkorn).

I started out to see what the keeping qualities and crumb structure of a YW /SD combo levain and a straight YW levain would be compared to a SD levain bread.  I figured that if YW alone couldn’t supply a decent keeping quality and was better in combination with SD for this while still mellowing the sour and providing YW’s unique crumb structure - there was no sense making a straight YW bread if you could get the benefits of it and still get the SD keeping quality with a combo levain.

We love challenges of all kinds and bread baking ones are no exception.  Anything, within reason, that one can do to learn something new, stretch limited understanding, gain new skills while having some fun at the same time, sounds good to my apprentice.

Top left are rolled oats, top right aresteel cut oats, bottom are whole oat groats.

We went with another multigrain white bread this week but instead of putting ground sesame and flax seeds in it we went with the 3 P’s: pistachios, prunes and pumpkin seeds.   This bread is the equivalent of 38% whole grains due to the Toadies and malts.

We have been trying out various versions of buns for hot dogs and hamburgers.   This time we went back to basics and looked for a whole wheat bun on the King Arthur website.  We found their 100% WW one for hot dogs and their white bread one for hamburgers.

Holiday weeks usually mean festive cooking in the kitchen or outside on the grill and in the smoker.  This week all three were up front and well used.   It started off last Sunday with grilled salmon and corn on the grill.

Ingredients

5 pound brisket flat

6 cloves of garlic, minced

2 C beef stock (unsalted or low salt)

2 C red wine

3 large onions, sliced 1/2” thick

1 celery rib and 1 carrot sliced 1/2” thick

4 T canola oil

1 tsp each sea salt and fresh ground black pepper

1 tsp each onion powder and garlic powder

3 T of tomato paste

1 cup ketchup

1/2 cup Vietnamese garlic chili sauce –more it you like it hot.

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 tsp each dried thyme and rosemary

We used the same amount of the 3 part levain that we used for the Challah bake earlier this week.  It was a 3 stage poolish with a pinch of DY, YW and SD levain that was retarded for 48 hours 1 hour after the levain had risen 25% after the 3rd feeding.

Our last Tzitzel used a SD levain and we know the Pratzel’s Tzitzel was commercial yeast.  We would expect that this will more closely approximate the flavor of the St Louis original corn rye.

We were going to make a multi-grain challah but, at the last minute, decided to do a more typical one.  It is white bread with saffron, honey, sugar, egg and oil.  Pretty standard except the honey sugar egg and oil are a little less than the standard traditional challah - if there is such a thing.