Wild Yeast Garden Tomato Integral Bread

100% Whole Wheat Sourdough Garden Tomato Bread

Fast on the heels of the last Garden Tomato Bread, and while I was working all weekend and alone in the house over Thanksgiving, I was free to make a mess in the kitchen and use what limited time I had even when working 3x 12 hour shifts in a row to see if I could make a 100% Whole Wheat Garden Tomato Bread with my wild yeast. 

It was serendipitous.  At the last minute (late on Saturday), the nurses on our floor of the hospital decided to have a pot-luck on Sunday, and I was able to bake this bread on Sunday morning before heading off to work.  Thank goodness I had started making this bread on Friday night, because it takes about 3 days to make.

It meant a rather different schedule for the bread, lots of 12-14 hour retarding of the dough in odd places (even violating some of of Chad Robertson's Tartine Bread rules), but nevertheless it made for some tasty bread.

This time I made a typical Tartine-style bread, only I used my 100% whole wheat starter, and 100% whole wheat flour only (what Chad Robertson describes as an Integral).  There is no all purpose or bread flour in this bread.  I have hydrated it at 80%+ (75% to mix it up, with 5% extra to add the salt, paste, ginger, and seeds as before, plus whatever hydration the tomatoes bring), This time I used only 3 tomatoes.  I didn't squish the tomatoes down, so the tomato juice didn't get spread around quite as much as the last garden tomato bread I made.

The schedule:
Friday night, after work, @2030: refresh the sourdough, ensuring that you will have 200g of it ready to use in the morning (about 8 hours for this sourdough build).  Measure out the ingredients for the morning, since you'll be too pressed for time and sleep-groggy to do it properly in the morning.  Take a flashlight to the garden to collect the tomatoes and the herbs, since it is now dark when you leave and dark when you get home.  This time get a handful of nasturtiums too.

Saturday morning, before work @0500: mix the dough, giving it a 20 minute autolyse before adding the salt, paste, ginger, and seeds.  Turn it once 20 minutes later, then cover it and put it in the refrigerator to retard.  Forget it for 14 hours.

Saturday night @2030: get home from work, take the dough out of the fridge, let it rest a couple of hours to bring it to room temperature, then divide it and shape it and set it in baskets.  Put the covered baskets back into the fridge overnight, and fall asleep because you'll be getting up early.

 

Sunday morning: wake at @0450 and bake the bread: take the dough from the fridge, preheat the oven 20 minutes, and bake it 40 minutes.  Jump in the shower and then go, driving to work with a cooling loaf filling the car with fresh-baked bread scent.

Results
This was a good bread.   The crumb was mostly wide-crumbed, as a Tartine loaf is, but the very centre of the loaf had a couple of spots that were still a tiny bit moist.  I think that it could have used another 5-10 minutes of baking, but the crust was a gorgeous tawny, light-brown colour.  Overall, I was very pleased with this bread.

Few others appreciated it as much as I did.  As far as potlucks go, there was little else for me to eat, as I am a vegetarian: the store-bought pizzas, the home-made quiches and wraps all had meat or seafood on them.  So I ate my bread and some salads.  But few others ate my bread, from what I could tell.  I came home with half a loaf. 

You can taste the peppery flavour of the nasturtiums.  I love it.

Notes to Myself

• I think that squeezing the tomatoes to get the hydration up is a better idea than using water and simply adding chunks of tomato. It spreads the tomatoey flavour around more. Next time I will again press the tomatoes through a sieve to get the liquid separate, rather than using (so much) water.
• I have been using fine spelt flour for the lining of the proving baskets, and this seems to work as nicely as rice flour.
• The double retarding of the dough worked fine, even though Robertson says that the dough requires a long room-temperature bulk fermentation.  The final dough didn't seem overproofed to me. But probably it would have been a bit better if I had been able to bring it to room temperature a tiny bit longer than 20 minutes. Say, an hour?
• Most people other than me prefer a bit of all-purpose or bread flour in their bread.  I love whole wheat, whole grain, best, and will continue to bake to ensure I get it.  Just look at all the vitamins and minerals and fiber and oil you lose when you use a more processed flour!  And don't forget, you get less exorphins...

A couple of whole wheat and "00" breads

 

Whole wheat and "00" breads

I had some "00" flour that I bought on a whim when I was last in Ottawa, and I decided to make a Tartine country loaf with it for my sweetie, with 70% "00" and 30% whole wheat flours; but I also made a couple of loaves for myself, with 70% whole wheat, and 30% "00" flour.  I've added salt at the first turn, and at the second turn, I've added 80g of Sesame Seeds (unlike the official Tartine sesame bread, I haven't toasted the sesames).  So the two breads, in terms of ingredients, are somewhat symmetrical.  I'm using a kg of each flour, its just that each dough is lopsided to the different end of the whole grain equation.

I became curious about the"00" flour as I used it, and did a bit of research on it.  It is as fine as talc, and it has a protein percentage of 9.5%.  I found it kind of expensive, but I bought it just to see what it was like.

It comes to us in Canada from Italy, from the Divella company (google-translated here).  The Divello family started the company about 120 years ago in Rutogliano, a central city in Apulia.  The Apulian region is the breadbasket of Italy, where Durham wheat has long been grown.  It was here in 1890 that Francesco Divella, a wheat trader, decided to build the first of his Durum wheat mills.  About a decade later, he also built the first of his pasta factories.  Today, the company is run by another Divello (a fourth generation Divello: is he also named Francesco?  or is it Vincenzo?), who is the great grandson of the company's founder.  In addition to flour, and 140 different pastas, the company processes a great deal of vegetables that go great with pasta, and now they have begun to make biscuits and cookies.  The company is not publicly traded.  It remains in the family.  It's motto is "Quality above all." 

In terms of Italian pasta manufacturers, Divello is nowhere near the largest.  It has captured only 6.5% of the Italian market.  But they have grown through exports, and now they are in 80 countries around the world, and their cash-flow is respectable at 300 million Euros per annum.  That pales when you place it beside the larger pasta manufacturers of Italy of course: Barilla, founded in 1877, now handles 4.2 billion Euros annually and sits in the number one position; following on its heals are Buitoni, founded in 1827 in Tuscany, and DeCecco, founded in 1886. Like the rest, Voiello was also started as a family-owned and operated business; but now Barilla owns it. And Buitoni is now owned by Nestles.

Divello is quite proud of its product.  They are passionate about pasta, and concerned about using the best ingredients and methods for it.  And Italians in general are proud of their long tradition with pasta.  They are quick to point out that Marco Polo did not bring pasta back with him from China, that there is evidence that it was already here before he got back.  But the time-margins of that evidence are slim, and it seems clear that China had it long before Italy.  It is simply that Italy perfected it, using their local ingredients.  Now, the famous Mediterranean diet is intriguing the world with its healthy properties.  The Italian diet wasn't always so healthy, as the book "Garlic and Oil: Food and Politics in Italy" by Carol Helstosky points out.  But the efforts of companies like Divello seem to have made an impact.  I gather that Francesco Divella has also delved into politics (he is a congressman in the FLI party -- which seems to be somewhat of a right-wing reaction to the Berlusconi scandals, and an attempt to put ethics back into politics.  The FLI has only been around since Feb 2011, and as of now it seems as if its future as a party is still in flux).  Helstosky points out that political will has been necessary to change the diet of Italians for the better, too.

I found it interesting to learn that the Apulian region no longer grows enough Durham wheat to feed Italy -- so Italy is now a net importer of grain.  I believe they get some from Canada, and some from the U.S., and they mix it all together to make their flour a standard quality.

Results

The 70% Whole Wheat and 30% "00" dough worked up easily and the bread  tastes great.

The 70% "00" flour, with 30% Whole Wheat made a really nice crumb, and tasted fine too.  It was a hit with friends and family that I gave it to.

Notes to Myself

• While making this bread, and thinking about pasta, and using the "00" flour, it got me curious about making pasta from my own sourdough. My first attempts were disastrous, but I may learn enough to eventually blog about it.  Here is my starting point for the next attempt.
• What is the first thing that one thinks about when one hears about a successful, family-owned, world-wide Italian business? I'm afraid that the first thing that comes to my mind is the Mafia. (Or rather, as the Apulian version of the crime network is known, "Sacra Corona Unita",  or SCU )
  
  The fact that the Divello family is by all appearances religious (as the article in "Famiglia Cristiana" (Google translation here) shows) is not immediately going to change my first impression of a successful Italian company -- after all, there is a religious element to the SCU as well.
  
  I have no evidence that this company is involved in organized crime. But one wonders how an agricultural processing business could become successful in that time and region without encountering the SCU, or rubbing shoulders with it somewhere along the line. I would imagine a business such as Divello would attract organized crime, if for no other reason than that Divello could easily handle some of its smuggling.  But this is all pure conjecture on my part.
  
  I found only a brief mention of Divella in a news article regarding price fixing (going back to 2007), but using Google Translate I can only get a glimpse of the lawsuits that took place. It seems, however, that Divella was accused, along with 29 other Italian pasta companies, of price fixing.  Divella was the only company that launched a counter suit against the Competition Authority (presumably because its good name was besmirched?) but apparently it lost the case.
  
  It is a shame that I have immediately drawn the conclusion of the stereotype.  It is a shame that I did not simply think that the secret of Divello's success is hard work, investment in appropriate technology and a quality product.  It seems that Divello really is working hard, world-wide, to change that stereotype of the Italian Mafioso with all the smuggling and money laundering that goes with it -- the first thing that leapt to my mind.  Divello is exporting a quality product, which should eventually change the stereotype, drawn from fear, of the Mafia -- Italy's infamous export.  For that, I will give Divello credit, and until proved otherwise, the benefit of the doubt.  Good luck, Divello!

ww, rye and flaxmeal bread

ww, rye and flaxmeal bread

Here is a Tartine-style bread, that is made with 70% whole wheat, 30% rye, with some extra flaxmeal tossed in (about 0.5%).  The crust also has some flaxmeal.  The hydration of the bread is 80%.  Flax seed is seeing a surge of interest lately with the new nutritional finding of the importance of Omega-3 fatty acids in our diet.  Flax needs to be ground into flour or meal though, to get the benefit of its nutrition, or the tiny seeds will pass through the intestines without unpacking its goodness.  Here I've just added the meal into a regular whole wheat and rye bread to see what it would taste like.

Genetically Modified Flax Anyone?
Once again I would like to draw everyone's attention to Genetically Modified Objects in our food supply.  The wiki on flax describes a GM flax called Triffid, which was grown in Canada (as late as 2001), although never commercially, and it is no longer grown.  Nevertheless, some of this GM flax still somehow finds its way into the flax that is targeted for export.  This causes problems for the flax industry when European importers reject it out of hand.

Wheat growers and marketing boards should heed the lesson.  And so far, they have.  But we are continuously bombarded with news that various groups are interested in trials of GM wheat.  I try to follow some of the arguments for and against transgenic wheat and report on it in the transgenic wheat wiki, in what I hope is a balanced way.  Because I have personally heavily edited that page, I have become interested in any GM food that is introduced into our food supply.  Currently in Canada we have GM rape and soy (without much fanfare and not nearly enough discussion, I must say). I personally would like our wheat to remain uncontaminated by GMO.  On the other hand, I am not opposed to continuing some contained experimentation on GM wheat.  I really think that we have to learn far more about it before releasing it into our food chain or into our environment, though.  And we won't learn much about it without experimentation.

I think it would be a good idea to learn what there is currently in wheat (likely as a result of Norman Borlaug's influence) that has caused the increase in wheat allergies over the last few decades.  There may even be a way to get rid of it with transgenic methods! Would that be a good thing?  Hmm.

If something as small as the difference between Omega-3 and Omega-6 oils can make such a big difference in our health, and we've only just learned about it, what else do we not yet know about, in terms of human nutrition?  We're still just scratching the surface and learning about what is safe and what is not.

Incidentally, have a look at this interesting TED video: Robyn O'brien (author of "The Unhealthy Truth") gives a TED talk in Texas.  While she doesn't specifically mention wheat, she does target milk and corn and soy as foods that have had their proteins tinkered with, and are likely causing increased allergies and maybe even cancers.  With California currently proposing labeling laws for GMO in our food, her concerns and story as a mother are noteworthy.  Who wouldn't want to know what they are eating?  Who is behind the move NOT to label GMO foods?  I am on the side that says more information is a good thing.  Even if labeling is not legislated, if producers of GM foods really are proud of what they are doing, and think it is good for the consumer, they would label it even without legislation.  The fact that they want to sneak it by the consumer shows me that they simply don't have the health and welfare of the consumer at heart.  And if the government bows to the pressure of the industry instead of sticking up for the consumer, they too should be held accountable.  We need to know what we're eating.  Whatever Californians decide, the rest of the continent will soon follow.  Lobbyists already have a web site (that is where I found the Robyn O'Brien video).

While I can't prove it, nevertheless I believe that the bread I make myself is safer and healthier than the processed and well-traveled bread that I can buy.  Here is a link to the page that I sometimes fiddle with, that deals with some of the nutrition findings and questions about grains in our diet.  Someday I should clean it up, elaborate it and give some footnotes.

Crust:

Crumb:

Bread Results
The top of the loaf, coated with a bit of the flax meal, gives it a glittery sheen that reminds me of mica.  Curious.

This bread stales quickly.  It is slightly bitter, which not everyone is going to like.  If you like coffee, you can probably get used to this bread (what I mean is, it is bitter the way coffee can be bitter).  For everyday use, I think I would add some honey or malt to this bread in the future.

Notes to Myself

• Laura Dolson has some interesting tidbits of info on flax meal.
• The Flax Council of Canada has some good info on flax meal on their website.  They say that Flaxmeal is okay to use, up to 10 months from the grinding, without the oils turning rancid or a breakdown of the omega-3s. Hmmm. 
• Add honey or malt to a whole wheat and rye dough containing flaxmeal to make it slightly less bitter.

Tartine-style WW bread with 20% Rye, and a (Final?) attempt at Millet bread

 WW breads with 20% Rye, and another (final?) attempt at Millet bread

I quoted a government source the other day that suggested pearled millet was poised to become the next big grain, like corn.  But after a couple of days experience with it (baking it into bread, making a porridge, and making some patties for a meal), I have to say that I have my doubts.

millet porridge

millet mush having a bit of sourdough added to it

In order for pearled millet to approach the importance of corn or wheat or rice, someone has got to solve the problem of millet's rapid staling or rancidity.  Its oils may have to be removed, as they are in wheat, and if the oils go, there has to be some fortification added; or its oils may be further processed, as they are in corn, and secondary markets like corn fructose or ethanol will have to be found in millet for this to happen.  Neither wheat nor corn end up being healthy when they are so transformed.  And millet will suffer the same fate, I'm afraid.

With the last couple of breads (the millet loaves) going stale before I could eat them -- literally before my eyes, even as they cooled from the oven -- I was forced to make some more bread the very next day.

Bread #1
Just in case the millet loaf I was making bombed again, I mixed up some whole wheat with 20% whole rye flour, with a hydration of about 84%.  It was retarded overnight in the fridge.

Bread #2
Then, because my sweetie's all purpose millet loaves were also hardening on the kitchen counter before she could eat them, I thought I'd at least try one more millet loaf before calling it quits with bijri flour. 

I made an loaf with 60% AP, 30% bijri, and 10% ww flour.  This was at about 78% hydration.

But I made a mistake with the ap loaf: I had completed my folds and was bench resting it for 30 minutes prior to shaping it when I fell asleep on the couch.  I didn't even hear my ipod's duck alarm going off in the next room.  I was gone.

At about 3 in the morning, the cat roused from his spot under the neighbour's barbecue, where he was safely out of the rain, and he knocked at the window.  His wet furry paw sounded like a squeegee being rubbed against the glass next to my ear.  I heard that.  I got up and fed him, and realized my bread had been bench resting for 4 hours.  There was a bit of oozing happening, but I formed it the best I could and set it in the prepared colanders.  I was a bit worried about what might happen to this bread: would the gluten be already peaked, and even now unwinding?  Would the yeasts be spent?

I decided to go ahead with it and see what would happen.  After all, some old recipes advise you to knock the bread down twice.

Results

I put a loaf of the millet and a loaf of the ww&rye in the freezer for a day when I won't be able to bake.

The rye worked fine.  This is a bit more rye than there is in the official Tartine Rye bread recipe (and there is no AP flour in this one, either).  There are some awfully wide holes in places in this bread.  Doesn't hold jelly too well because of it.  But the crumb is quite pliable and it tastes good.

The millet loaf again performed poorly in the oven.  I didn't see any rise in it.  This is not the way to make millet bread, I've determined.  Nevertheless, there is evidence of a lot of yeasty activity in the airy crumb.  I was happy to see that, since I have been refreshing my wild yeast daily for a while, thinking that it was a little sluggish.  But because of the long bench rest, this loaf is probably quite a bit over-proofed, and the gluten is likely weakened because of it.

I'm still quite happy with it.

Unfortunately, the bread was (barely) acceptable, the next day, for my sweetie's breakfast.  She had entirely rejected the millet loaf based on the weight of the bread, literally setting it aside as she ranted about how inedible my tough loaves are.

I quietly cut her a thin slice and she tried it.  "It is good with peanut butter," she reluctantly said, after complaining for several minutes that there was no breakfast bread in the house, and all this bread I had made is just "lunch bread." 

Notes to Myself

• Still not a fair trial of millet flour in a bread, since it had such a long bench rest. Will it stale quickly like the last loaves, even though I didn't include the hulled millet? Time will tell. So far, the loaf tastes fine and nutty.
• The millet porridge that I fermented with a few tablespoons of whole wheat starter was a revelation in taste.  I loved it.  But I gave it to my wife to try, and she wrinkled her nose.  "Ugh," she said.  "It tastes like nutty yogurt." Exactly!  I would eat this plain, like yogurt.  And if you add a bit of fruit (and perhaps some sugar or some maple syrup, if you must), you have a dessert.  

60% Rye with Soaked Kernels

60% Rye with Soaked Kernels

This is a 60% Rye Bread (40% Whole Wheat), using a whole wheat wild yeast starter at 100% hydration. 

I made a mistake and added 400g of starter instead of the Tartine Bread usual amount of 200g, so I expected this bread to ferment quicker and be more sour.  I didn't expect how much it would change the hydration of my dough.

Grains in a Thermos

After adding the salt, the dough sat for about an hour, and then I added some rye kernels that had been soaked in boiling water overnight.  Recently in my internet browsing or reading about bread, I encountered someone who used a thermos to keep boiling water that is poured onto grains hot overnight.  The grains get substantially softer (I was told).

I've tried that here, and I think it is a pretty good idea.  These rye kernels were still too hot to touch when I checked on them this morning.  They needed about an hour of cooling, out of the thermos, before they could be safely added to the dough.

Ingredients:

• 600g rye flour
• 400g whole wheat flour
• 720g water
• 400g whole wheat starter @100% hydration
• 20g salt
• 50g water (when adding salt)
• 573g boiled, soaked rye kernels

The dough was sloppy.  I figure it to be hydrated at around 77%, and with poor gluten formation, as is usual in rye breads that have a lower wheat content.  I didn't expect this bread to really hold up to baking in a dutch oven, but I went for it anyway.

On Gooey Hands
My mother reports that when I was an infant, I hated to get my hands gooey.  Of course, back then, one has little dexterity with which to feed oneself with a spoon, or indeed, to do much of anything.  Goo makes that even more difficult.

Hands are more than mere appendages, they are our first contact with the world-as-it-is.  They are confirmation that things that we see and hear inside of us, are actual things with physical properties outside of ourselves, things not directly attached to us.  Touch, through the hands, brings the universe into focus.  The 'Thou' of the 'I-Thou' relationship: the object in your hand, which also brings the subject, your consciousness, into focus.  We grasp and we let go, and so we learn about boundaries of skin and self and other.

Things get blurred therefore, when stuff gets stuck to your hand.  Imagine your rage if you are an infant with a newly emerging identity of self and body consciousness, and stewed prunes, or pureed carrots, gets stuck to your hand.  What is this stuff?  Get it off!  Get it off!

As a young child, however, I learned to revel in dirt, and water, and how you could mould these elements to make things.  I loved making sandcastles at the beach.  I would even dig vast holes and mounds in the dirt at home using the hose.  This was a way to manipulate the objects in the universe, to express the self.

There is something of that to be found still in high hydration doughs, especially rye dough, which doesn't build its gluten as a wheaten dough does.  You have to get your hands dirty.  You have to learn how to relax when it sticks to everything.  Moist hands are helpful.  An attitude of playfulness is best.  An appreciation that the division of subject and object, so useful for the child's engagement with the world, and the adult's sanity, are not particularly the predominate consciousness of the baker, who loses himself in his work.

Folding rye dough, I am at one with the Universe.

Results

Big disaster, getting this dough from the basket into the hot dutch ovens.  The first one I did Lahey-style, picking the dough up by the cloth,  The dough was very wet and sticky and stuck to the cloth, and when I pulled the cloth free, at least half of the dough was still on it.  I cursed, as the smoke alarm started going off, and I began tearing off handfuls of dough and tossing it into the pot with a sense of urgency.  The knife I had sitting close at hand to score the loaf still sat there, laughing at me: ha!  You really thought you'd use me today?

The second loaf I was going to do much the same way, but because of this disaster, I elected to upend the basket over the skillet side of the combo cooker in Robertson's Tartine style.  Again, some dough stuck to the cloth, and flopped over the edge, missing the skillet entirely.  The dough that did make it flattened right out like a sourdough pancake. 

So much for being one with the universe.  Realizing how quickly my zen had become spoiled, I became humbled.  I grew quiet and philosophical amidst the noise of the smoke alarm.  Mindfulness.  Be here now.  Breathe deeply.  Awaken the Kundalini.

The dog looked at me as if I had lost my marbles.

I will eat these loaves.  Perhaps I'll consider it my penance, or Karmic retribution.  I'll report back here whenever.

You can see the whole wheat flour that should have been on the outside of the loaf, mixed with the inside crumb: what a disaster

Look closer, you can see the rye kernels in the crumb too: quite plump and moist

These rye kernels do add a lot of moisture to the bread so the knife comes out sticky.
This sort of bread needs baking a lot longer, in which case it would probably resemble a pumpernickel.

Notes to Myself

• Cut the water back to 65%: 630g (+ 20g when adding salt)
• Cut the ratio of rye to whole wheat flour to 40:60
• Use a ton more whole wheat on your basket liners.
• Get some real bread baskets that won't require lots and lots of flour on them (you never put enough flour on the basket anyway).
• Grains overnight in boiling water is a great idea, if you use a Thermos, youcan keep the grain hot for a long time, and the grain softens substantially.  It will have water content that will go into the dough, too, so really be careful about the hydration of this loaf.  You should not add too much water.  Keep it about 65% if you can.