exorphin junkie: Play loaf with Barley, Rye, 8grains, and Whole Wheat

Thursday, December 23, 2010

Play loaf with Barley, Rye, 8grains, and Whole Wheat

Play Loaf

Children must play, and so must home kitchen bakers sometimes. This is just one of those episodes of playing in the kitchen, to see what I might get. I just picked some ingredients at random and tossed it all together to see what might happen.

I was still thinking about that 123 idea, and wondering if I had used 3 parts of water by mistake, on the last "loaf". I decided that for this experiment, I would toss some ingredients in, using 1 part eccentric flour, 2 parts whole wheat flour, and 3 parts water. With no other thought in my head than that as a roadmap, I began collecting ingredients.

Step 1:

(1 part) 92g barley flour
(2 parts) 184g wwflour
(3 parts) 276g water

The first ingredient I picked out of the cupboard was some whole barley. I used about 1/2 a cup of this, whole, which I measured to be 92 grams once I had run it through a coffee grinder to mill it into flour. I measured the whole wheat flour on a scale: approximately 1 1/4 c made 184g. So the water needed to be 276g, and that was about 1 1/4 c, minus about 2 tsp. This was step 1.

Step 2:

(1 part) 60g 8grain cereal (~1/2 c)
(2 parts) 120g rye flour (~ 1 c)
(3 parts) 180g water (~200ml or 1 3/4 c - 2 tsp)

For step 2, I boiled the water with the 8 grain cereal just to boiling, then removed it from the heat and waited about 5-10 minutes and then stirred in the rye. I kneaded it into a ball and let it sit another 5 minutes.

Step 3:

7g Salt ( 1 1/2 % of the total flour weight)
5g Yeast ( 1% of total flour weight)
5g Homemade yeast (another 1% of the total flour weight)

Here I just mixed all ingredients together -- the salt and yeast together with what I had in step 1 and step 2. The dough from step 2 is still warm, but the water from step 1 is still cold.

If you add up the 8grain cereal as part of the flour, this is a 100% hydrated dough: total flour is 456g, and the total water is the same. I did not expect to be able to knead this dough. But I did turn it out on a floured surface to try to shape it a bit. Then I just placed it in a basket lined with a floured couche, and left it to sit for about 8 hours.