Community Bake - Infinity Bread

Things are beginning to come into focus. I will start today by building up my rye starter. I will blog all bakes and link 🖇️ them back here. 

Kind regards,

Will F.

Love the Infinity Bread moniker, Paul! I'll have to see what I can come up with...

Lance

I'll try to bake something in this direction on the weekend. It's quite similar to what I often bake anyway (significant % of whole grain, with seeds - very common approach for me recently, but I don't really bother writing down or thinking through what exact amounts to use...). Thank you for organizing this CB! Been a while since we've had one.

Well, now you've done it, gone and pulled me back out of my spider hole again.

I took my go-to version of Scott MeGee's ciabatta to task here, bastardizing it further by using 40% AP flour, 30% dark rye and 30% semolina.  The final two comprised the majority of the biga.  At the end of the mix I slipped in toasted walnuts and cinnamon coated raisins (thanks Caroline for that trick).

The two hour BF saw a very nice rise with the dough looking thick and shiny, but thanks to the rye it remained quite sticky.  It took a lot more flour on the couche than I desire to use, but I was perhaps overly cautious about the dough getting stuck on the linen

Due to the consistency of the dough it never had that elegant characteristic of a ciabatta dough and indeed the rise in the bake was minimal with the bread coming out unsurprisingly dense and exhibiting none of the characteristics of  what one anticipates in a ciabatta.

It seems to be a fine bread for slathering with butter or cream cheese and/or jam.  And I'm certain will make fine morning toast.  And now?  I'm officially off the hook for completing this CB!

 Comparison to my typical ciabatta bake

Maybe a little bit of both? Smile...

After a 20 minute ride in the Bosch mixer, the dough looks reasonably developed. Smooth, slightly sticky, and tight. Bulk fermentation

The temperature in the fermentation vessel is 77°F. Timer set to one hour.

Did I mention, I hate the mess any kind of seeds make? Please stop by and have a look vat my blog post.

Infinity Bread community bake

Paul!  Thanks for organizing a CB!

I’ve been away from TFL for almost a year with a long work assignment.  Came back just in time for a CB!

 I’m in your neck of the woods this weekend, but I will definitely participate in the CB and post something in the next couple weeks. 👍

Wow! Terrific soft crumb, not gummy at all. I took care not to use more than 20% barley. Then I went ahead with another 14% prefermented source rye . LOL.

I have dough fermenting now for this bake.  I had a bread planned already when I saw this community bake.  The % of non-wheat flour is only 20% though.  I’ll share more later.  Thank you Paul for starting a community bake, it has been a long time since we’ve had one.

Benny

Here's my first effort for this group bake.  Besides the flours, flakes, and so forth in the basic template, I've added some cheese and - get this - salt-pickled sweet corn.  I pickled the corn in early September.  Some of the cheese ran out and left voids, and the corn kernels sticking out remind me of teeth, but the flavor is surprisingly good, with the acid from the pickled corn working against the heavy whole wheat/whole grain flavors to make an unexpectedly good combination.

The crumb is pretty open considering the ingredients, and it has a pleasant chew without being tough.  The crust has a nice crispness without being tough.

Here's the formula-

Formula

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102g King Arthur bread flour
99g ww (stone-ground-97% extraction)
30g rye (Bob's Red Mill "dark")
45g masa hariña
15g rice flour
9g ground oats
30g (dry) scald - sifted bran + rolled oats **
6g salt
1 tsp sugar
105g buttermilk***
60g white starter 100% hydration
20g shredded cheddar cheese
30g finely diced cheddar cheese
90g pickled sweet corn/corn relish (rinsed and drained)****

** I used 3 gm ww bran (all that was sifted out) + 7g einkorn bran that I had left over + 20g rolled oats with 90g boiling water

*** I added  20g water during initial mixing and 62g more after a 45-minute rest.

**** I rinsed and drained the corn to try to minimize excess liquid and salt.

Process
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- Mix the bread and WW flours, and the salt and sugar,  with the room temperature buttermilk plus the extra 20g water and let rest for 45 minutes;
- Mix in all the other ingredients except cheese and corn;
- Stretch & fold dough between the hands until a little springiness develops;
- Rest 45 minutes and do another S&F.  This time, squeeze the dough with one hand to make it thinner so it can be pulled out more easily.  The idea is to develop some extensibility as well as elasticity;
- Rest 1 hour and repeat the previous S&F;
- Leave the dough for a total of 5 1/2 hours bulk ferment;
- Refrigerate overnight;
- Warm up 1 hour, and shape, adding in the cheese and corn between layers as the dough is rolled up;

- Proof for 2 hours free-standing; uncover for final 10 minutes to develop a skin for better slashing;
- Bake with steam 40 minutes at 400 deg F plus another 18 minutes to dry out the interior.

Pictures -

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This doesn’t quite follow the guidelines of the Infinity Bread for the Community Bake, but it is my contribution.  My non wheat flour isn’t up to the 33% range that is in the write up.  I chose buckwheat flour which I toasted well to bring out the nutty flavour to the maximum.  I used the toasted buckwheat flour as all the flour in a tangzhong.  The texture of the tangzhong is different from what I’m used it, it was clumpy in lumps rather than one big mass.  I chose toasted black sesame and pumpkin seeds as the inclusions and used golden sesame seeds to top the loaf.  Instead of butter I used avocado oil and instead of cow’s milk I chose a sweetened soy milk.  

The details are in my blog post.

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This is the same 80% PFF biga at 79% overall hydration dough as before.  One thing seems to be clear to me.  This corrupted ciabatta formula is one of the few if not just about only that I've run across that just does not want to be a baguette.  The dough seemed wrong at divide and shaping early this morning, and the inclusion of nuts and fruit made the task of shaping more challenging.  Even after an overnight retard which included an extra fold at midnight to punch it down. 

First off - with inclusions like nuts and fruit on a slender dough, shaping and scoring is always going to have its own challenges, more so here.   But they were included in this bake to conform to most of Paul's Infinity Bread Template.  The formula for this dough begs to be handled too gently, shaped with no deflation at all and to NOT be scored, as it was designed for a ciabatta bake.  However, the scoring seemed just dandy until the bread emerged from the oven.  

Changes - Still holding at 40%/30%/30% combination of flours here.  All of the AP flour went into the biga which comprised 50% of the PFF, the other two grains were divided evenly at 25% each.  But the major change was substituting WW for the dark rye and tritordeum* for the semolina.  Beyond that, not much else changed in the composition of the dough nor the methodology until the retard phase.

*Introduced on TFL by Abel Sierra a decade ago, tritordeum is a true hybrid grain of durum and barley - not a mixture.  Unavailable in the US,  I was able to bring several Ks home from Barcelona on a prior trip and I like it.  It handles well and bakes up quite nicely.  On our recent trip back I was able to pick up several K more at our local excellent Forn Baltá bakery in the Sants neighborhood of Barcelona. 

I'm a bit disappointed in the outcome due to the misshapen shaping (the slackness of the dough combined with the craggy character of the dough thanks to the inclusions) and the lack of a decent score.  But can't say I'm sorry for traveling this route, and indeed it is a tasty bread, much more to my palate's desire than the earlier bake.

Bacon, eggs, and infinity Bread. The sunflower topped variety.

Baked rye rolls this morning.

Soaked 100g whole rye kernels overnight from Friday to Saturday, about 18 hrs. They became soft, then I "milled" them in a food processor with some more water to help it go along.

Also overnight refreshed my rye starter, and added the equivalent of ~50g rye flour to the rye grains after they became nearly a paste, and mixed in the same food processor. Added some extra water for a soft consistency. Let it ferment a couple of hours, it rose a bit and became a little spongy. Not sure if it was really ready, but I went with it. Added 150 g white and 150 g whole wheat flour as per the ratio (so in the end 150g each type of flour, if you consider soaked rye as flour), 9 g salt, a spoonful of malt extract, and after combining and adjusting the water to reach a soft dough consistency, added a little olive oil.

Let it ferment with some stretch and folds for some time until it seemed a little risen and ready. Didn't note the time...

Then shaped into 8 rolls and placed into a nonstick baking tray with space between. Sprayed the surface with some water and sprinkled with sunflower seeds. Let it ferment overnight on the balcony outside, around 10 C supposedly. Baked with steam in a hot oven on a baking steel, then browned them without steam. I think the steel browned them a little too much on the bottom, but not too bad.

[url=https://ibb.co/QM7DPg1][/url]

Totally a coincidence (not inspired by Ilya's great-looking rolls), I just completed my own bake of Infinity Rolls.  The form factor is supposed to be Sheboygan rolls, which are similar to Kaiser rolls but with a smooth top creased down the middle -

https://www.tastingtable.com/1429205/wisconsin-sheboygan-bread-rolls-little-known-regional-icon/

The Sheboygan rolls are white flour, fluffy inside with a bit of a hard shell outside, and used to contain bratwursts in a sandwich.  Of course, with the whole-grain-heavy Infinity template they won't be light and fluffy inside, and will have an opinionated flavor, but what the heck!

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The notable changes from my first Infinity try was to add buckwheat instead of rice flour, and to include a tangzhong made with milk and beaten rice flakes.  Oh, yes, there was way too much water because of some mental blip, so I had to compensate with additional bread flour.  For the seed component of the template I showered the rolls with Everything Bagel Spice (EBS), which is mostly various seeds.

The flavor turned out to be superb. You can taste the rye but it is mild and complemented beautifully by the other grains, especially the buckwheat.  The crumb is very open for a grain-heavy dough like this, and the roll has a slightly harder crust but not tough.  These rolls may be the best-tasting grain-forward breads I have ever made.

Formula
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102g bread flour*
99g ww (stone-ground-93% extraction)
30g rye (Bob's Red Mill "dark")
30g buckwheat (Anson Mills)
24g masa hariña
15g beaten rice (in tangzhong)
6g salt
1 tsp sugar
30g oil
215g water
60g milk (in tangzhong)
60g starter 100% hydration (25% ww, 75% AP), overripe
30g Everything Bagel Spice sprinkled on outside of rolls**

* Plus 30g added later because hydration was too high.
** Reduced to less than half for the 2nd batch because mix was too salty.

I mixed the wheat flours with the salt, sugar, and all the water and gave it a 45-minute rest.  Then I mixed in the rest of the ingredients and gave them a good stretching in my hands.  The dough got two more S&F sessions over the next hour and a half.

Because the starter was very over-ripe, I expected that the bulk fermentation would be very slow and that's how it worked out.  However, in the evening I portioned and shaped to rolls. Five of them went into the refrigerator after an hour proofing.  The remaining two I proofed for nearly 3 hours and baked that night.  This was partly to check to see if the planned amount of ESB was all right - it was much too salty so I reduced the amount for the remaining rolls.

The next morning I warmed up the chilled rolls for an hour and then baked with steam. I also broiled them for about one minute total to crisp up and brown the tops a little. These five are the ones in the photos.

Based on this recipe.

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Recipe: 

• 500g Organic Stoneground Wholemeal Buckwheat Flour
• (?) Water
• 10g Salt
• 2 Eggs
• 18g Oil
• Half a packet of IDY
• 100g Seed Mix (35g pumpkin seeds, 35g sunflower seeds, 15g sesame seeds, 15g golden linseed)

Method:

1. Scald 300g of the flour (should be paste like).
2. Soak the seeds in hot water.
3. Wait a few hours. 
4. To the scald add the seeds, eggs, oil and salt. Mix thoroughly. 
5. Add the yeast to the remaining four then add the flour to the scald. Mix thoroughly. You should aim for a rye consistency. 
6. Leave for about an hour. 
7. Portion out into a loaf pan and bake when a nice dome has formed. 

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This is the best textured buckwheat bread i've gotten from buckwheat flour. And the taste was a surprise. It tastes like it has sugar in it. Very surprised how this turned out. Definitely a method i'll be using again when making a 100% buckwheat flour loaf. 

My blog post for this bake.

Kesra rakhsis is a yeasted Algerian flatbread that is cooked on a griddle (could be in a skillet).  For example:

http://thetealtadjine.blogspot.com/2018/03/algerian-flatbread-from-constantine.html

From the link: 

Kersa Rakhssiss is a soft on the inside and crispy on the outside. It's halfway between the Algerian unleavened flatbread called kesra and the leavened bread called matlouh.

People normally cut wedges or break off pieces.  It's normally made from semolina flour.  I've made it that way a few times before.  Today I adapted it to the Infinity Bake template (is nothing safe??)

First, the pictures, then the formula and the mistake I made.

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 Formula for 300g flour
======================
33.3% 100g AP flour
33.3% 100g WW (stone ground 93% extraction)
20% 60g buckwheat (Anson Mills)
13.3% 40g rye (Bob's Red Mill "dark")
1 tsp sugar
6g salt
15g nigella seeds
15g sesame seeds toasted
1/2 tsp instant dry yeast
1 oz oil
water/buttermilk (see below)

Spurred on by Abe's bake with scalded buckwheat I decided to make a scald with the non-white flours and arbitrarily chose to scald 50% of each of them.  That came to 100g non-white flour, and I needed 250g of water in the scald to hydrate the flour.  My mistake was that that was way too much water for the rest of the flour.  In addition, since I wanted to include some buttermilk, I went ahead and added 100g of it.  After all, I told myself, I didn't know how much of the water in the scald would act like free water in the dough.

So the dough came out way too wet.  I added about 50g of AP flour during mixing but though that helped, I didn't want to add much more.  I decided to deal with the dough with stretch-and-folds even though this was a yeasted bread that would be expected to proof for around an hour.  I mostly used wet hands during three S&F sessions over around an hour, and then proofed for another hour.  Then I patted out the ball of dough into a disk about 10 inches across.

This worked, but the large heavy disk of dough was still soft and had to be handled carefully so that it didn't deform much while it was transferred to the griddle.  I knew I would have to cook it at a lower temperature for a much longer time to drive out all that moisture.  So the cook time became 50 minutes instead of the perhaps 15 minutes these breads usually take.  Even so, and even with checking the interior temperature with a probe thermometer, the interior was still a little wetter than I would have liked.  Also, I didn't bother trying to brown the edges as some people do, since it would have taken a long additional time of me standing there holding the bread on edge with tongs.

With all this, there's a pretty decent crumb, and the taste is quite wonderful.  The nigella seeds really come through enough to add little pops of flavor that enhance the bite.  The flavor is grain-heavy, of course, but excellent for all that.