Below are pictures of some bread I baked recently.
Specifically, whole-grain sourdough bread with lots of chunky
bits. The interesting thing about this bread is that right as I
was about to bake it, I discovered that my oven was broken.
Yeah, it seems that the lower heating element is not
functioning. Not sure what's up with that yet, but I'll figure it
out soon. So anyway, not to be discouraged, I put my baking tiles
(four 8"x8"x1/2" unglazed quarry tiles) right under the broiler
for a long while until a thermometer beneath the tiles
showed just over 450°F. So then I knew the tiles themselves
were pretty toasty. I moved the tiles down to the bottom rack and
put a couple of pans of boiling water on the top, just under the
broiler. Then I slid the loaves onto the tiles and closed up the
oven. The pans of water, in addition to making the oven somewhat
steamy, were to shield the loaves from the direct heat of the
broiler, which certainly would have burned them on top well before
they'd been baked all the way through. It worked pretty well; so
well that I had to remove the pans at the end of baking for about
7 minutes to get the top crusts nicely browned.
So the loaves came out pretty well. The crust was not my best,
and I got a little less oven spring than usual, but overall my
improvised technique worked quite a bit better than I
expected.
I don't have time to transcribe the entire recipe, but this is
the summary version. All percentages are given in
terms of percent of total flour, by weight.
- 70% hydration
- 26% "chunky stuff" (seeds and intact or cracked grains,
pre-soaked for 24-48 hours, but not pre-cooked.)
- 87% whole wheat flour (50% whole white wheat, 37% whole
red wheat)
- 11% whole rye flour
- 2% gluten flour (You could certainly make this without
gluten, but due to the rye and "chunky" content, you'd have to
cut back on the hydration or have an extremely sticky dough
and very dense outcome.)
- 21% of total flour is from the starter, which was built in
two stages from storage leaven. Each stage multiplies the
previous stage roughly 5x and goes for about 10 hours at about
30C. The storage leaven was 100% whole wheat, but after both
builds the starter ends up 50% whole wheat and 50% whole rye
flour.
The recipe produces a little over 1kg of dough, which I split
to make two small boules. I use no commercial yeast. I do add a
little milk powder (50g), olive oil (2T), barley malt syrup
(non-diastatic, 1T), and 1t of salt. (I don't weigh these
ingredients because my scale isn't so good with small amounts.)
You could leave all those things out (other than the salt) and
still get a similar result.
After mixing and kneading for 15 minutes by machine, the dough
is risen in three stages. First, about 3 hours at slightly above
room temperature (I target 27C, but I'm not very precise about it)
to get everything going. Then, once the little buggers are fully
awake, I slow everything down in the refrigerator for about 12-16
hours. Then I knead the dough briefly by hand, divide, form
loaves, and let them rise (in improvised proofing baskets) at room
temperature until they're ready, which is usually 4-6 hours.
The result is a bread with a prominent tang but not sour in an
unpleasant way. The crumb is moist, dense, and soft. The crust
was really good in the first few hours after it came out of the
oven—crisp and flaky—but it was rather thin, so by the
next morning it had softened considerably. This I blame on the
oven malfunction. However, what the crust lost in texture
overnight it more than made up for in flavor, developing a
wonderful sweet and slightly smoky taste.
