Hamelman 5 Grain Sourdough Rye

Hi and welcome to my first blog post. Had always been a long time lurker in TFL, admiring and learning from the many delicious looking creations from all the posters. Finally, decided to start a bread blog to record the process and outcome of each bake. Started bread baking a few years bake but has only been baking about once a week due to other activities - hence limited baking. Being a bread baker in Singapore brings with it quite a different set of challenges such as the higher temperature and humidity which means that normally recipes have to be adapted slightly to suit local conditions. Maybe I will slowly address these various issues in subsequent blog post. Also fascinated by the chemistry being bread baking and am an avid reader of chemistry and cereal publications. Would be interested to find out also how bakers in tropical areas deal with all these issues too. 

But first up, Hamelman's 5 Grain Sourdough Rye. A house favourite and my personal favourite among the other multigrain formulas in the book. The use of a rye sourdough really adds a depth and added complexity that trumps the non-rye variants. For this bake I followed the seed mix as recommended - flaxseeds, cracked rye, sunflower seeds and oats. Though for the oats I substituted half with rye flakes. Made 1360g of dough and bake as 2 loaves. Used 1/2 tsp yeast and 11.5g salt (2% instead of 2.2%). Prepared starter and let it ferment for 10 hours at 30C. Mix 10 minutes. Bulk ferment 1.5 hours. Proof 45minutes. And here are the results (Hope the picture works!):

And the crumb shot, moderately open and full of seeds.

Notes: Rye makes up 25% of the total flour. Reasonably easy to handle, not too sticky. Mild sourness with a nice balance between the lactic and acetic acid. Wheaty taste with the added complexity of rye. Would normally like to bake at a higher temperature to get a browner crust but decided to go for golden brown this time round for a different look. Could still decrease yeast slightly as the final proof was going very fast already. Can't decide which variant is better, the soak sunflower seed (which is easier) or the toasted one. Both bring a different taste to the final product.

-Tim