I decided to make one of my favorite Community Bake recipes again and made two of the Hamelman Five Grain loaves using cracked rye, oats, sesame seeds, pumpkin and sunflower seeds. I used a mix of bread flour, hard red winter wheat, and rye. I also upped the hydration a bit. I tried to develop the gluten before adding the soaker, but then the large volume of soaker made it hard to I corporate.
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Also my first bake of 2021. Great minds think alike. Looks delicious and I know it is. A firm favourite for a lot of people. Bon appetit.
Happy New Year.
It was great, but not quite as wonderful as I remembered. Should have toasted the seeds! Happy New Year!
Very handsome loaf Ilene, lovely first bake of the year. I’m trying to be less lazy and toast the nuts and seeds before using them in bread, or buy toasted ones when available. The flavour of the toasted seeds/nuts is so much better than not toasted.
Happy New Year and all the best to you and your family.
Benny
I found that the optional overnight cold retardation makes an enormous difference in this breads flavor, for the better.
David
The loaf and crumb look inviting. I too am getting all the ingredients together to bake Hamelman's Five-Grain Levain tomorrow. I hope mine comes out as good as yours. I note your point about the difficulty of incorporating the soaker after developing the gluten.
Am I correct by assuming this was his Five-Grain Bread (page 281) rather than the Five-Grain Levain (page 182)? I'm hoping for a better flavour than when I last made the Five-Grain Bread.
Cheers,
Gavin
Hi Gavin,
I believe this is the 5 grain bread (I don't have the book) where a soaker is made using various seeds and grains. Happy baking!
OK. Both are five grains, but different ones. Also, his five grain bread uses commercial yeast only, but the five grain levain is sourdough. If my bake tomorrow turns out ok, I post the formula. Cheers.
It looks like I made the 5 Grain Levain from this thread. It was a sourdough and I didn't include the commercial yeast.
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/59038/community-bake-hamelmans-fivegrain-levain
Ilene, when you wrote that it didn’t taste as good as earlier bakes, I instantly thought you supplemented with CY. BUT, you wrote that was not the case. I’ve baked too many 5 grains to count and they all tasted great. Although on an occasion CY was used along with SD and the flavor was noticeably missing. I baked these loaves with and without toasting and found every one of them to be great. The seeds are seldom toasted any more.
Can’t imagine why your bread’s flavor was off. Did you maybe use high gluten flour? Could some of the seeds gone stale?
As David mentioned, did you retard the dough?
Hi Danny!
It did taste great, maybe just not quite as outstanding as I remembered. The dough was in the fridge for about 5 hours. I need to look back at my notes to see how that compares to the other times I've made the bread but definitely not toasting the seeds and less time in the fridge could explain the difference. Happy New Year and happy baking!
That's a nice looking loaf. Thanks for sharing. With all the attention this one is getting this year I'll have to try it.