Rye Swirl Bread

Since I've now finished my Julie & Julia trip through Daniel Leader's "Local Breads" I will now make breads on a whim, choosing from any of the books I have, online recipes I've saved, or recipes people have given me.  It's not that I didn't do this before, but now there's just 'no next recipe in the book' to move on to.  That said, there are plenty I will make on a regular basis - pain au levain (must have made this about a million times), Auvergne dark rye, blue cheese and rye loaves, alpine baguettes . . . . . so many wonderful breads to revisit.  Then there are all the yeasted ones I glossed over that I'd like to remake using sourdough.  So much bread, so little time!

Anyway, while leafing through my bread books (Dean Brettshneider's book "Global Baker") this loaf immediately caught my eye - such a spectacular looking crumb!  So sort of make it I did.  Well when I say sort of, I used the basic idea in the recipe, but not the recipe itself.  For starters the recipe is yeasted, 2nd it had molasses it in which I don't particularly like (well that said, I had one bad experience with back-strap molasses and haven't gone back, but maybe I just need to try again), and it also used caraway which my friends don't particularly like.  So I used the same recipe I made last week (Polish cottage rye), and split the dough in two.

Mr Brettschneider's recipe made two batches of dough (200g of flour in each) essentially the same, except the dark rye dough had twice as much molasses as the light as well as 15g of cocoa powder for colour.   I split mine in two after kneading but before fermenting, but stupidly forgot to add in the cocoa, so folded it in by hand during the fermentation.  It started off a bit swirly and my hands were brown and oily, but we eventually got there!

Dough layers pressed together

So once the dough had fermented the shaping fun began.  Each dough was split into two equal pieces - so you have 4 pieces of dough, two light and two dark.  Each piece was flattened into a rectangle and the dark dough placed on top of the light dough and tightly rolled together to form two logs.  The logs were placed seam side down into 2 loaf tins, covered with plastic bags and left to proof for a couple of hours at RT.

Doughs rolled together

In loaf tin

 

Prior to baking (oven preheated to 210°C), the loaves are slashed once straight down the middle of the loaves lengthwise.  Baked with a handful of ice cubes for 25mins.

Baked

I think my loaves were slightly under-proofed so had a lot of spring in the oven, plus I think I slashed them too deeply, and should have only made one big loaf as I think the swirls got a bit distorted.  Also the dough recipe I used probably wasn't the most ideal as it was a very soft, delicate dough, and something slightly firmer would have suited better.  Mr Brettschneider's dough was at 60% hydration (175g AP flour, 75g rye, 150g water), whereas the one I used was 65% excluding the large volume of rye starter.  Still looked pretty cool, will send to YeastSpotting, but would like to get it looking better!

 Crumb

 

As per the original dough made last week, the bread had nice flavour, and the cocoa was not noticeable in the taste.

 

Happiness is making bread!!

K.

 

 

"Local Breads" - Czech Country Bread (Zitny chleba)

Well I had a HUGE day in the bread kitchen this weekend!  Made 4 different breads, have given them all away, and would love to do the same again tomorrow . . . . . too bad I have to go and earn my keep!

I made this first bread in the Czech chapter last weekend, and made it as per the recipe (including the yeast), docked the loaf instead of slashing . . and was very disappointed with the result.  The docking didn't allow for the big oven spring I usually get, so it split as well as being hampered by it's tight skin.  It tasted just fine, just didn't look very interesting.  So I decided to revisit it this weekend, leave out the yeast and slash to my heart's content!  And yes, I got a much better result!

So to the recipe:

STARTER:
Fed my rye starter at 10.30pm Friday night - 50g starter + 100g water + 75g rye flour.  Left it at room temperature overnight, and it ended up sitting there all day as well, as I left house to go for a walk with the dog at 10am, but didn't end up getting home until 8pm!  No I wasn't walking the dog the entire day, but ended up visiting friends, staying for dinner etc. so into the fridge the rye starter went at 8pm.

DOUGH:
150g rye starter, 300g tepid water, 400g bread flour, 100g rye flour (fine), and about 14g salt (recipe also calls for 5g yeast, but I gave that a miss) - mixed this all together in a bowl until formed a rough dough, then covered with a plastic bag and let sit for about 30mins to autolyse.

My day got interrupted yet again by a walk around Panmure basin with friends and dogs, so the dough only got a couple of 10sec kneads before I had to head out the door.  It rested about 15mins between kneads.  And got to relax in a bowl inside a plastic bag whilst I was out getting some air and exercise.

(Theses photos are from the first take making this bread last weekend.  Only the last couple of photos are from today.)

Dough fermenting

At 12.30pm on my return it got another knead, back in the covered bowl, folded about an hour later, then at 2.15pm I shaped it into 2 boules.  The dough hadn't risen that much during fermentation, but on slicing into 2, there were nice bubbles in the dough.  The boules rested in my couche at RT until about 4.30pm.

Shaped and ready to proof

Sprinkled with rye flour ready to bake

BAKING:
The oven was heated to 210C an hour prior to baking.  I slashed the loaves in a circle around the "shoulder", just for something a bit different.  I haven't yet found the ideal way to slash round loaves.  Last weekend I slashed a pain de champagne doing a sort of branched pattern down the loaf, but the slashes weren't big enough as the loaf burst through, and ended up a really ugly shape, so didn't want to try that again.  I have only slashed around in a circle when I made an Auvergne couronne, so was expecting a similar result.

Docked loaves from last weekend - see the splits/tears

The loaves were baked for a total of 40mins (with 5 ice cubes thrown in at the beginning for steam), with a rotate at half time.  This time around I got a fabulous oven spring and my loaves completely popped their tops!  I think they look super cute.

My popped tops from this weekend

You almost wouldn't think they were the same recipe.  Admittedly I did use quite a coarse rye flour last weekend and a fine one this weekend, so my dough was a bit of a different texture.  I haven't cut one of these open yet, so will how the crumb looks tomorrow morning.  One of them got given to a friend and I have kept one for myself to compare it to last weekends effort.

Today I also baked the 4 pain au levain I started last night when I got home - 2 had linseed, 2 plain.  This pain au levain is pretty much my favourite and most often baked bread.  All 4 loaves were given to friends tonight on a neighbourhood bread run at about 6pm.  I just love making bread!

Not a bad looking day's work!

PS. here is the crumb shot taken the following morning:

Decided to send this one off to Yeast Spotting on WildYeast.com - cheers Susan!