Starting monastery bread

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Martadella on 19 Apr 2022 at 14:49

I love this bread and the whole process is so nice

https://youtu.be/p_zZggD827c

In a pint jar I added some rye malt and raisins,  topped it with lukewarm tap water and then splashed in some homemade apple scrap vinegar. After just 10 hours at 38°C it's already showing the signs of fermentation. It's still not ready yet for making a starter, but maybe tomorrow? 

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Interesting, I like liquid starters, as I am working with both fruit water and grain water starters respectively. Would 38 C be too hot for yeast to activate? Will this be a onetime use to make a flour-based starter or will it be maintained as a liquid starter? 

The liquid temperature is 37, I just checked a little while ago. Akso, I'm not sure if the thermometer is accurate. The raisins started floating to the surface, which is great. I'm going to turn the light off and let the oven naturally cool down. Will post pictures tomorrow.  

You can make a flour starter out of it and perpetuate it,  or use it up and make fresh one when needed. It's such a simple and easy process, I simply make new starter when I feel like baking this particular bread

Another interesting method of creating a levain for bread.  I’ll be following your trials with this Marta with great interest.

Benny

I'm going to try this but I'm trying to guess the scale for my 10 cm cubed pan. 

300g of flour (total) would give me a total dough weight of just over 500g which should fill the pan about 50% but I'm not convinced that this is going to double in volume. 

Anyone care to guess the volume increase?

Oh yeah this is basically sourwort that we have been brewing but with the raisins added which I think you already have the same thing in the fridge. I did not watch the video so I didn't know this bread would include the malt, very interesting. I have a "yeast-wort" starter that has wheat brans which I include in my bread without straining but I have never included the fermented malt. Can't wait to see what will get out of it. 

Good idea with google translate, Gary! I don't know how to calculate flour amount, because the only measure I take when making this bread is 650 ml of total liquid 

And here is the state of my ferment this morning

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Martadella on 21 Apr 2022 at 07:10

I measured my liquid and made opara (preferment) It should have consistency of a pancake

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batter

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Some things didn't go according to the plan,  but it's baked and smells very good. Crumb tomorrow 🙂

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My loaf has cooled and I've sliced it. 

It barely made 4 inches tall. The crust is quite tough, likely because I had to bake it for 75 minutes at 350F to get the internal temperature to 195. I've got it in a paper bag hoping it will soften a little. 

The flavor is more sour than I expected from the description.

My starter failed so I switched to the flourless sourdough starter that Mariana taught me to make. It is very similar to this one. I must have measured something wrong in my attempt to make his starter because that should have worked.

So, yesterday evening I ground 5% rye malt and combined it with 31% of the flourless sd starter and 2.5% raisins. I let it steep for a while and then went on to the preferment step. I kept the preferment at 30C overnight and mixed up the dough this morning. I let it ferment at 30C for 90 minutes, then put it in my tiny pan for another 90 minutes to rise. Finally I baked at 350F starting from a cold oven. 

I have very little experience with rye so I kept baking it trying to the temperature up to 200F or to get 15% weight loss as suggest here.

Overall good fun.