I've been making a lot of whole grain breads lately but I really felt the need for something completely opposite and not quite as healthy. We were going to have some chicken burgers for dinner one night last week and they wouldn't have really worked on slices of 100% whole grain bread so some Challah rolls were needed.
This formula is based on one of Peter Reinhart's with a few modifications and ended up making some great rolls.
Formula
Ever since I received my new toy I've become obsessed with using freshly milled flour in my bread baking. Since I was traveling last week for a job interview I didn't have any time to bake until this weekend so I refreshed my mother starter, created a levain using some of the refreshed starter and just to see what would happen, I added some sour cream in place of some of the water to make the levain.
Last weekend I converted part of my AP starter to a Rye starter building it up over 3 builds and ending up with a 100% Rye starter. Since I also refreshed my AP starter I decided to make a new bread utilizing the rye starter which was built using freshly milled rye flour as well as my AP starter. I used a much higher percentage of rye starter for this bread and also included some freshly milled spelt, Hard Red Winter Wheat and Hard White Wheat along with some additional rye.
My wife requested some of these tasty rolls at the last-minute for our belated holiday family dinner this past weekend. She wanted something to go along with her eggplant parmesan and lasagna and these really went well.
Since I didn't have a lot of time to make these with yeast water or sourdough starter I used some instant yeast but to try to build some extra flavor I retarded the dough overnight in the refrigerator.
My wife requested an Italian style bread to go with her lasagna for this weekends belated holiday dinner with my family. I couldn't just make a simple Italian bread of course, so I made a new version of an older formula I posted about early last year. This is loosely based on Peter Reinhart's Italian bread from BBA where he uses a biga which I replaced with a durum based starter. I also used some freshly milled white hard wheat, freshly milled spelt and rye flours along with KAF French style and Durum.
I've been wanting to try the Ken Forkish style pizza dough ever since David Snyder on TFL posted about his great love for this formula and procedure here. David changed some of the timing in the recipe to achieve the ultimate results. I followed his directions pretty closely with the only thing I changed being I used my mixer on low speed for the initial mix and used some fresh milled white hard wheat flour in place of the WW he used.
This bread uses a combination of fresh milled flour from my Nutrimill and store-bought flours. The hard red wheat and hard white wheat were fresh milled.
I used some pecan meal I had bought during my trip to King Arthur Flour a few months ago in the starter which adds a nice nutty flavor to the final dough. I also used some canned corn that I roasted under my broiler since corn on the cob is not in season in New York right now.
I received a Nutrimill for a present from my wife last week....another new toy to play with! I've ground fresh flour in small batches in my coffee grinder, but it is no comparison to using the Nutrimill. I have yet to purchase any drum sieves to sift the flour and I definitely want to buy some bulk grains as soon as I can find a good source.
For my first attempt I used whatever I had on-hand which was Kamut, Hard Red Whole Wheat and Hard White Whole Wheat. I used the Kamut to make the levain and also made a scald with some of the white whole wheat.
This is an adaptation of my regular Durum Semolina bread with the main difference being the addition of Orange Shandy beer for the water and some dried orange peel. The beer has a slight orange flavor undertone so I thought adding it to this formula with some orange peel would create a nice flavor combination and I was not wrong. You can taste the hints of the orange beer and orange peel but it's not overpowering at all. This bread is very tasty and is excellent for breakfast, lunch or dinner.
