I received a wonderful surprise this week when I opened an unexpected package sent to me by Anita’s Organic Mill. They were kind enough to send me the flours, cereal and swag in this photo.
Butter toasted seven grain porridge sourdough is a new recipe I put together to highlight the wonderful steel cut organic seven grain cereal and organic sprouted whole wheat flour from @anitasorganic The cereal is toasted with butter and then cooked but still left al dente.
I used a stiff levain of 60% hydration to help handle the heat of the summer yet still allow an overnight fermentation. I wanted to give time for the whole wheat to fully hydrate but also wanted to make adding a stiff levain easier so in the morning 1 hour before the levain was ready I added the sprouted whole wheat to all the water. When the levain was ready pH 4.09 I added it to this slurry and easily incorporated it. Next I added the salt and rest of the bread flour. The porridge was cool when added during the first set of stretch and folds.
Bulk fermentation was ended when the dough reached a pH of 4.22 corresponding to an aliquot rise of 40%. After shaping bench proofing continued until a pH of 4.0 was reached corresponding to an aliquot rise of 60%. The dough was cold retarded at 3ºC overnight. In the morning at the time of baking the pH had dropped to 3.89.
I’m very pleased with the oven spring and bloom on this loaf. I think I’ve found the right pH values to aim for with my rye starter and my flours. As always the crumb will tell the final story.
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Benny - another excellent bake!
The crust looks perfect - how's the taste and crumb?
Tony
Thank you Tony, It is still cooling. I think I will make sandwiches for dinner tonight so I’ll slice it then and post photos.
Benny
Quite pleased with how this one baked up. The crumb is even which is my perference. There is a nice contrast between the soft crumb and the toothy steel cut grains which I enjoy. There is the sweetness from the sprouted whole wheat that is lovely. Overall one of my better hearth loaves lately.
I made “Cuban” sandwiches with this bread for dinner.
You have definitely hit it out of the park with this one!
Thank you Danni for your kind words, I haven’t been all that happy with my hearth loaves lately but this one I happy with.
Wow! Taste sensation I would say. You guys are spoilt for choice with flour varieties. Envious :)
Thank you Gavin. I guess we are quite lucky for the varieties we have available to us growing in our country. The US has more but we do alright.
I love the flavor of sprouted flour and with all the other goodies packed into this bake I can imagine how flavorful this must be. So what did you do to get so lucky to receive this goodie basket?
Thank you Ian, it is the first time I was baking with their seven grain cereal and their sprouted whole wheat. I’ll be baking this loaf again.
I’ve been using some of Anita’s organic mills flours for a while and when posting on Instagram, I was tagging them each time I posted a bake using their flour. I guess they liked what I’ve been baking and were so kind to send me those flours, cereal, toque and bowl scraper. It was such a nice surprise and for someone without a home mill, having access to these good quality flours is incredible.
Happy Baking
Benny
I think you should update your avatar wearing the toque :)
Here’s the happy recipient of the flours.
💕
Looking good Benny! Both you and the bread, great crumb. Can't work out if in real life that crumb is sticky to the touch or not, but you do make me want to give up my love of machine mixing and develop the gluten by hand again.
I love that the cereal is fermented as well, never thought to do that before! Did you leave it in the fridge though, can imagine that an overnight in summer would be too much for it?
-Jon
Jon I’m sorry my notes in the chart are misleading but since I was working with so many new factors I decided against fermenting the cereal prior to use but left that note for future bakes. I was worried about introducing more acid to this dough that might speed up gluten degradation. Regarding the crumb, I don’t find it sticky. I do like the gloss of the crumb though something I always like to see.
The crumb is really nice which is not easy to do with a multi grain loaf. I like the idea of a stiff starter for this bread. Glad to see you getting your mojo back. A Cuban sandwich is one of my favorites. I am guessing you would need a panini press and a hoagie roll to remove the quotation marks?
Don
Thank you Don I’m also glad to have baked a good loaf. I’ve been laying around with pushing the lower limits of pH and have kept going too low. This is the first one where I don’t think I went too low. I don’t use stiff starters much always thinking that they will be too hard to incorporate into the dough. However by mixing all the water and the whole wheat allowing it to fully hydrate for an hour then adding the starter it wasn’t hard to mix after all and still autolyse the whole wheat.
You’re right I didn’t quite have the right bread and ability to toast it to be a more true Cuban.