This is an earthy, delicious and easy loaf to make. Flour composition is: 22% whole red spelt, 22% wholegrain, 20% whole barley, 16% whole teff and 20% white bread flour. Hydration is 75%.
I began the night before by making a biga with the 22% spelt and 22% wholegrain. The biga was 45% hydration and consisted of 10% of my standard rye starter. I left this to ferment for 15 hours at around 15 degrees.
The next day, I made a tangzhong at 1:3 ratio, whole teff:water. I added the remaining hydration needed for the loaf to the tangzhong, and once it cooled, poured it over my biga. I left the biga clumps to hydrate this way for about 5 mins, before adding the remaining white bread flour and salt.
BF took 3.5 hours and proofing 1.5. I coated the loaf with pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds and pine nuts, and baked this at 220 degrees for 40 mins, first covered then uncovered.
Excellent taste and really moist crumb. I love the colour that teff gives!
- ll433's Blog
- Log in or register to post comments
I aspire to make such loaves one day. How about the seeds embedded in the slice?
This is a fun loaf to make, perhaps you'll give it a try sometime. It also helps to clear the pantry!
The seeds in the slice - those were a convenient mistake. The shaping proved to be a little messier than usual since it was quite wet and wouldn't hold its shape. When I plopped it into the bed of seeds to shape, it spreaded out way more than usual, meaning that some seeds were then collected into the loaf when I seamed it up.
what a fantastic bread, Lin. I love the ease with which you make these great recipes happen.
Rob
Not with as much ease as you handle your ryes ;)
What a crumb for 80% wholegrain, looks like you got it right with the biga and tangzhong tricks here. Plus the flavour and moisture too! Will you make it again?
I've never added teff to any of my loaves, even the gluten free ones, which are about to become my main stay for the next 20 days while I go on a detox diet.
Oh, and yesterday we bought ice creams from a place where they included some interesting African grains. They had a flavour with teff (toasted?), egusi and caramel (the one I tried) and fonio (also toasted, I think the one my wife tried).
-Jon
two cheers for egusi! I love Nigerian egusi soup. How was it in ice cream?
Rob
Honestly it was a weird flavour, I preferred the fonio!
as Wallace Stevens put it:
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
Rob🤔
Thanks, Jon. The crumb remains great today - just finished off the last two slices. And surprisingly, the husband, whose stomach has never been able to take more than 50% wholegrain bread from bakeries, had absolutely no problems with this loaf - even went on a long run with it. Seems like my sourdough efforts might be paying off somehow. We're getting somewhere!
Will make this bread and certainly use this formula again. Might jazz up the composition of flours, depending on what needs to be used up in the pantry. Teff is after all a seed, right? Maybe I could substitute the teff tangzhong with buckwheat - might be similar and also tasty.
What types of grains/seeds are you using for your upcoming gluten free bakes? While experimenting with the rice bread, I thought of making a loaf version of dhal - i.e. fermented rice and lentils in bread form. If it works, it would be really tasty and would give a normal rice bread a nutritional boost.
Teff must be really delicious toasted. I've never had egusi or fonio! How do they taste in the ice cream?
Guess your future may contain many more of the wholesome sourdoughs, since it sounds like a hit with the husband. Assuming he enjoys them too. Healthy, doesn't necessarily mean a bread that gets loved and eaten! But, in this case, it does sound like you've found at least one magic spot of healthy bread that is also enjoyable!
I found the ice creams exciting primarily because they were original, and we have plenty of other fantastic original ice cream in Cape Town. The fonio had a nice vanilla-like flavour to it.
So, gluten-free bread. I'll be the first to admit to many many failures. And the 'successes' have been dense. Or weird. Or potentially deadly. The rice only bread is actually one of my greatest successes in the gluten-free lane. It was such a success that I've made a few more of them subsequently (the different kinds of rice absorb water amazingly differently!), just to confirm it wasn't just a one off fluke. So that is my fallback.
This weekend I'm going to attempt this recipe that came from Martadella:
So, I too am going to make a 'buckwheat' bread. I put that in quotes because buckwheat flour feels like cheating, it should have groats.
-Jon
We find ourselves solidly advancing into the weekend, Jon, so one must ask: how goes the "buckwheat" bread? Very curious.
And packed with whole grains and seeds, too. That has to be very tasty.
Paul
Very tasty indeed, especially with a few slices of abbey cheese. All polished off!