Hi Folks
I have been reading about soakers and decided to change up the way I make a no-knead recipe.
Rather than grind the dry grains, I measured out 2 lbs of assorted grains and added 3 cups of water and let the mix soak about 20 hours.
I used my food processor to mash the grains and they were very hydrated. The recipe calls for the dough to sit at room temp for two hours and then a minimum of two hours in the frig before baking. The recipe calls for 1 1/2 T yeast and 1 T salt. I used a stand mixer to pull the dough together.
I'm curious to see the difference is in the bread/rolls after this change.
Any guess?
Thanks.
Owen
See my recent blog entries about this. Doable but too chunky for me without some added flour.
I looked at your posts. It looks like you took a guess as to how much hydration to use. How did that work out?
I baked some rolls and they are a bit dense. I used spelt flour for the first time. I'd like to learn how to learn to put my own recipes together.
Thanks again.
Owen
Owen, I weigh my grain prior to soaking and again afterwards. That gives me the absorbed water. I find it convenient to add enough additional water when grinding for a total of 80% hydration based on the dry weight. Then I add water for the hydration of any other flour separately in the total dough.
—Tom
Tom, are you using a blender/mixer or a food processor on your soaked wheat berries?
Dave, I use a food processor. I can do enough all at once for 40-50% of a 2kg batch of dough, but it’s difficult to keep the mash moving and it doesn’t get as smooth. Splitting that much sprouted wheat into 2 or 3 portions and processing 300-400 g at a time works better for me. I’m amazed that you can blend without it instantly glomming onto the side of the blender jar.
My blender is a Vitamix, and it was 306 grams water with 225 grams dry weight berries. IOW, however much water the dry berries soaked up, plus enough added water to make 306 grams total water, or 136%.
It took a slow increase of blender speed from slow to high speed, to gradually liquify/blend the berries. So I'm glad I got the _variable speed_ model Vitamix.
It also took a few times stopping the machine and using a silicone scraper to push the unblended parts down to the blades, and then restarting. It was only after doing that once, that I remembered a plunger came with the blender for exactly that purpose, and you can do it while running the blender.
The result was a paste; the consistency was between a liquid and a dough. I didn't notice the chunks left until after baking and eating.
The whole rolled oats ("old fashioned" kind) also resulted in some more "chunks" in the final baked product, but the quick/minute oats totally dissolved.
More interestingly, there was a noticeable amount of bouncy springy gluten developed.
It's turning out that the investment in the expensive Vitamix (around $400) is paying off for its versatility.
Tom, synthesizing my experience with the blender, plus reading someone else's experience with making dough in a food processor...
You can develop gluten in a food processor (see Charles Van Over's "Best Bread Ever" book), but if you let it run too long, you can also destroy or cut up the gluten.
There was a post about that with a good picture sometime in 2020. Though it was some other recipe, not one directly from Van Over's book.
@sindlero: Well, you need enough water to make the berries blend into a paste. But, then the "dough", or paste actually, is way too wet.
So... I can only think of two things to do in order to lower the hydration:
Either add flour or add inclusions that will absorb water.
If you are using a food processor (not a blender, like I did) then I think you can add the flour or inclusions in the food processor and run the food processor a little more to incorporate them.
If using a blender, it won't "make dough" like a food processor can, so I had to take the "paste" out of the blender and add more flour/inclusions by hand.
As I mentioned above, don't run the blender or food processor too long, or it will cause the gluten to be destroyed.
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On another point, you can turn the soaked berries into a "mash", which is chunky, or into a "paste." At least you can with a blender. I have not personally used a food processor.
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Update: I just realized we could be talking about two different things. Maybe you're talking about adding what Reinhart calls a "mash" to flour-based dough.
I've been talking about mashed/blended berries _as_ the main part of the dough.
If you posted your formula, or link to online formula, or book/page#, maybe that would help. I think I've been using the wrong definition of mash/mashed, as noun and verb.