Spelt in thirds - one third freshly milled spelt grain, one third white spelt and one third organic bread flour. Plenty of spelt flavour, but without the heaviness of too much wholegrain.
Plus a few bakers' tricks:
1) a wholegrain spelt scald to keep the crumb moist.
2) cuvee sourdough levain "for a fine balance between aroma and acidity". This is a two stage levain from homebaking.at - with rye for the first build and wheat for the second.
3) the home milled spelt flour was put through a fine kitchen sieve and the bran was wizzed in a blade spice mill to reduce particle size. I find this helps give better loaf volume.
Mixing kept to a minimum with only 1 minute on spiral mixer speed 2, as I read spelt doesn't like a lot of mixing.
My bread log can be found here.
Lance
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That’s an awesome crumb for this combo of flours. I’m a big fan is spelt as well and always mill my own.
Best,
Ian
Very nice looking crumb. I like the idea of the cuvée sourdough. I should try it for the next pain de campagne.
BTW, the link is broken. I'm not sure, if Dietmar has an english translation for the cuvée sourdough. It seems like only older posts (2021 and older) are translated.
Thanks Ian and Sparkfan. I've sorted the link now - my glitch.
Indeed the site translation won't work on that page. I've also noticed that the very latest recipes are missing in the translated version of the site as well. So I usually just use my browser translate facility.
I've used the cuvee sourdough a couple of time with good results.
Also if you search for "cuvee sauerteig" on the German language site, you can find a few actual bread recipes using it, eg https://www.homebaking.at/pain-moulin-a-pierre/
Lance
Good crumb, colour and texture - Looks delicious, whole spelt is a winner for me! I imagine fresh milled makes it all the better.
Well done.
Michael
And terrific link. Have never heard of that method of starter feeding. Will definitely try . Link worked perfectly and translated. Looking forward to this result! Thank you c
There's not many bakes I like to repeat "verbatim", because I see it as a missed opportunity to try something new!
But this is one that I think I will repeat as it worked so well for me and tastes so good.
Lance
I have only seen it used in reference to wines. A vat of some sort. Would be interesting to know it’s intended definition in this case. thank you. c
I always thought it was something Dietmar thought up, but there is a reference from Puratos here:
https://www.puratos.de/de/neuigkeiten/sauerteig where Karl de Smedt says: "Sourdough cuvée – creative blend for a unique taste
As with the wine cuvée, the sourdough cuvée also creates a new taste profile based on two or more sourdoughs that are matched in taste. With this concept from Puratos, bakeries can further refine the taste of their in-house sourdough without changing the existing production process, in order to differentiate themselves on the market with an individual taste profile for each pastry. The sourdoughs can be used for breads made from different types of grain, crispy biscuits, laminated pastries as well as for soft yeast dough pastries."
That suggests to me adding two different levains at once, but try Dietmar's version - it's good!
Lance
Thank you. I guess I’ve been doing a type of cuvée when I blend several levains to achieve a certain taste profile as well.
I often have a YW levain and a rye and a bread flour and mix after they have each matured. Other times I feed a sample of my SD starter with YW .
Anyway nice to try new things. Thank you!c
Many recipes in The Rye Baker use two and even three different sponges. It sounds like this is basically the same thing.
TomP
And the cuvee levain is very interesting too, thanks for sharing. Beautiful crumb. Inspired to try!
-Lin
I think Lance is my levain guru. Very nice breads And I'll have to buy some white spelt to try something like this, sounds like an excellent flavour combination with an excellent crumb.
-Jon
Well it took me a long time to understand and feel in control of levains and starters. My rye starter was a recent struggle that I think I have finally overcome and I still have lievito madre to master!
Lance
Lance that loaf is quite the accomplishment especially one with a majority spelt. Anyone would be chuffed having baked this loaf.
Benny
For interest, here is a crumb shot of the tin loaf I baked alongside the previous Spelt batard.
What I find interesting is how much more closed the crumb is in the tin loaf. For me it highlights that tin loaves don't expand as much as freeform loaves. I could tell when I held the loaves in my hand that the tin loaf felt denser.
I guess it's because tin loaves can only expand in one direction (ie upwards). I think tins with angled sides like the vintage tin I used here may help somewhat as some of the sideways forces will tend to push upwards when they meet the angled sides of the tin. Unfortunately modern tins tend to have straight sides.
Another thought is that the difference in expansion must take place in the oven rather than in final proof, because final proof of a batard is also usually constrained in a banneton.
Lance
To be expected.
As a rule, be it SD or CY, dough that is to rise high needs strength as its own weight weighs down its rising ability. In contrast, low height i.e., flat breads need less strength. So we can expect a leaning toward lower hydration for tall pan (tin) loaves and higher hydration for hearth loaves. Additionally, we can expect to see full development for tall loaves and more middling development for hearth loaves.
The effect is understandable when it has been seen that wildly open crumbs can be more easily obtained from smaller loaves. There is less mass to weigh it down and expansion is less inhibited, especially in the heat of the oven.
The crumb you have here is a touch, what I would call "craggy". For me I like each alveolo cell to have a defined ellipsoidal shape, when I see angularity, I see weakness. I noted that you didn't employ much mechanical mixing...
Vit C. and tall loaves are a great combo. To echo the words of Emmanuel Hadjiandreou when working with him at Judges, "vitamin C makes dough rise up, rather than out".
I'm happy with the batard crumb, the tin loaf crumb less so. I accept the laws of physics, just trying to find a way round them!
I also don't like the regular round crumb holes you sometimes see (frogspawn crumb as I call it - without the eyes!). They suggest overfermentation to me.
I didn't mix the dough much with this bake, because of the perceived wisdom about spelt - do you disagree with this?
Your suggestion about AA is interesting - I might try it if I do this bake again.
And lastly, good open crumb in tin loaves is possible; look at these loaves from home baker Susan Shaw:
https://www.instagram.com/seuzy581/p/CaZxuiejERw/
https://www.instagram.com/seuzy581/p/CZ71BtVjoav/?img_index=3
Not sure how she does it though, especially with so much freshly milled weak wheat in the mix.
Lance
Very interesting discussion! Baking bread is a pretty complex matter ;)
Regarding the first insta post: afaik fresh milled flour results always in a more active / wilder sourdough. Might be one (!) of the success factors. Dough handling and shaping is for sure very important also for tin loaves.
I associate the kind of crumb you don't like in some loaf pan breads with high, sometimes very high, hydration. I'm happy with it because it means I can plop nearly any horrible mass of wet dough into my Pullman pan and get a nice, decently porous loaf.
Would they be the planned hearth loaves that played hard to get?
I've had a few of those...
Spelt can be unwelcoming of high energy input, but I've only witnessed this when using entirely whole spelt. White spelt on the other hand I have mixed a lot, such that I could form a ball at 100% hydration. With 33% bread flour I wouldn't worry too much about the other flours in the mix. As a rule weaker flour is more sensitive to overworking but if the gluten is developed gently to begin with it can still be mixed all the way to full development without breaking down. I've made very airy breads with weak 9% protein flours.
Comparing your bread and the linked (from Susan Shaw), I can see that her bread is more fermented and is probably lower in acidity. What are her methods? Yeast water? I think it would be fair to say that her methods utilise a more potent leavening capacity than your starter/ levain. Also her tin (pan) loaf is pretty small looking.
Is this the kind of crumb for which you are not so keen?
I made this at the weekend with LM, just flour water and salt, (no fats). 33% wholemeal stoneground flour. It came out pretty soft crumbed as I like:
Some interesting comments, Michael.
Fair enough - I'll try a bit more gluten development next time, though I always get to a window pane stage.
As you may know, I prefer not to go too far in bulk - oven spring and ears are important to me, so you may be right. I did add 0.08% idy and I wonder if this tends to give volume increase without dough development?
Regarding acidity, I know that my wheat starter and doughs do not tend to acidity.
I believe she uses a very active (her words) young liquid levain, no yeast water. I agree that my starter currently lacks vitality. I noticed this recently when my overnight levain wasn't as gassy looking as I would like. One of the drawbacks of a weekly refresh. I am currently proceeding with a multiple refresh program.
Agreed - her dough weight is 500-600g.
'Fraid so! Here's a more extreme example:
But that's just my preference! This is more my kind of crumb:
(shameless plug for one of mine!)
Of course, everyone has their preferences regarding crumb, and as we know some can be quite partisan....
It's surprisingly light in colour for 33% wholemeal. I could almost imagine it being white wholewheat, except you can't buy it stoneground in the UK (and only one source of roller milled).
Lance