Multigrain Loaf made with Whey

Multigrain Loaf made with Whey

We made some Ricotta cheese, which turns out to be very easy: you just get some milk, heat it gently, dump in some vinegar, and the curds and whey separate.  Homemade Ricotta goes well in my wife's "Swiss Chard Pie".

The first time we made Ricotta we tried it with lemon juice instead of vinegar, and didn't get enough separation.  And we were astonished at how much whey there was, leftover.  We gave some to the chickens, who drank it up happily.  And I thought, "since it contains some vinegar, it won't be any good for bread."  But this time we made it, I thought I'd try it.

I really liked the results of the last freeform multigrain loaf I made, so this is an attempt to duplicate that recipe, using whey and a couple of other new ingredients:

• Starter 200g
• Whey 800g
• ww flour 800g
• rye flour 200g
• wheat germ 50g
• sunflower seeds 30g
• pumpkin seeds  30g
• roasted soya seeds  30g
• flax seeds 10g golden +  10g brown
• "8 grain" mixture (mostly oatmeal) 30g
• salt 20g

The whey was quite cold when I dumped the starter into it.  The wild culture sat there for a bit, then sank to the bottom and dissolved.  Once I stirred it into the flour mixture, it gained a bit of warmth, so the dough was not at all cool to my hands.  The salt was added with a reserved 50g of whey after a short autolyse of 20 minutes.

The dough was stretched and folded q30 min for a few hours before I had to fall asleep in preparation for tonight's nightshift.  Although it was 80% hydration, it felt like it could have been wetter.  It was not very stretchy.  In the end, the loaf felt very tight, not unlike a dough at about 65% hydration.

Results

I think that the bread does have a slight vinegar scent, although you really can't taste it.  There was not much oven spring.  The gluten was not as well developed as I would have liked, but that might have required a higher hydration.

The crumb is quite soft, the only real texture is the multigrain.  And there seems to be enough of this.  Perhaps a few more sunflower seeds or pumpkin seeds would have been nice.

Notes to Myself

• Try bringing the whey to room temperature first before dumping the sourdough starter in it.
• Try an 85% hydration. The water content of whey is not 100%. Whey is the serous fluid of milk after it cheese curds have been removed. It contains a lot of proteins -- as the wiki on whey will point out, it contains alpha- and beta- lactoglobulins, as well as glycomacropeptides. It will also have lots of lactose, vitamins and minerals and even some fat. Unfortunately, wiki doesn't tell me how much water is in it. This is probably widely variable. Most other sources are concerned about removing the water content, to dry the parts that have food value. The site dairyforall (which promotes milk products) indicates that whey is between 93-95% water.  Using the number 95% for the water content of my whey means the water content of this bread is not 80%, but rather 76%.  If you used 85% whey, then the overall true water hydration would be about 80.75%.  With the extra proteins and fats which may act as surfactants, this would probably be appropriate for this whole wheat and multigrain loaf.
• The pdf de Wit, J. (2001) "Lecturer's Handbook on whey and whey products 1st edition" European Whey Products Association, Belgium indicates: 
  
  "Whey and whey-based products have been found to improve the flavour, aroma, colour, texture and (in some cases) also the shelf life of bakery products. The use of demineralized whey is preferred because of its blander taste…"

• Whey does work in my homebaked bread, and I am happy to have something to do with it rather than give it to chickens or pour it over my raspberry plants.

Stiff Starter Whole Wheat Sandwich Loaf with Wheat Germ

Revisiting the Stiff Starter Whole Wheat Sandwich Loaf, which I've been playing with recently, e.g. here and here.  I had to see if it would work with the 5% wheat germ put back into the dough (as reported here).  I also wanted to see if I could make a multigrain loaf using this method.  And I wanted to experiment with the temperature, to see what might happen to the crust.

So, three doughs.

1. Multigrain loaf #1

Here I am considering the total flour added to the dough to be 700g still, but I am backing off of it slightly because I am adding some 8-grain mix, which will soak up some of the water.  I still use the amount 700g for basic calculations (e.g. to calculate how much wheat germ gets used).  I think that this is the loaf that looked the best, and I gave it away to my niece:

• Stiff Starter: 300g (Contains 200g of ww flour)
• Water: 700g
• WW flour: 650g 
• 8-grain Mix: 65g
• Salt: 18g
• Wheat germ: 45g (5% of 900g)

2.  Control Loaf

Here I've used all of the whole wheat, but added none of the multigrain mix.

• Stiff Starter: 300g (Contains 200g of ww flour)
• Water: 700g
• WW flour: 700g 
• Salt: 18g
• Wheat germ: 45g (5% of 900g)

3. Oregano Loaf

I have been thinking of trying this loaf ever since I bought some ground oregano at Arva Mills.  I like the taste of oregano, but I've never seen it ground so fine as flour like this, and seeing it gave me the idea.  Twelve grams doesn't sound like a lot, but it is probably about 3 Tbsp, the stuff doesn't weigh much.  I wondered if it would turn my dough green.  It didn't, because the flour is whole wheat, but it made it noticeably darker, sort of grey.  The oregano changed the structure of the gluten entirely, making it incredibly tighter, as if it were soaking up way more water than the other loaves that had multigrain.

• Stiff Starter: 300g (Contains 200g of ww flour)
• Water: 700g
• WW flour: 700g 
• Salt: 18g
• Wheat germ: 45g (5% of 900g)
• Ground oregano: 12g (1.34% of 900g)

This is the loaf that I tried the so-called optimized baking time and temperature for lighter coloured loaves (report on that follows, in the section "Crust"):

7 minutes at 115 ℃ (239 ℉)

7 minutes at 130 ℃ (266 ℉)

7 minutes at 156 ℃ (313 ℉)

7 minutes at 176 ℃ (349 ℉)

This didn't work at all for my slightly overproofed whole wheat loaf.  It was already dripping in the humid afternoon heat, and my attempt at doing a "comb-over" of the dough just prior to dumping it into the oven didn't work.  In the low oven temperatures for the first stage, the dough merely drooped back over the edge of the tin and fell into my steam-pan.  After the 28 minutes of baking, the loaf didn't look or feel done, so I upped the temperature to 450 degrees and kept it in the oven for another 14 minutes.

The dough has an unusual purplish tint to it, almost as if I were baking it with walnuts.  It has a lovely sagey scent (very interesting while baking), but the bread is a bit too sour to make any final judgements on its taste.  "Smells like pizza," my wife said.

This loaf, if properly made, would be interesting with different cheeses.  And perhaps with dried tomatoes.  

Mixing photos

Crumb Results


The Oregano Loaf:

The Control Loaf:

Crust

Ever since I traveled to Goderich to try Burdan's bread, I've been thinking about crust.  My experiments with trying to make my whole grain half-rye bread's crust lighter can be found with a discussion of Burdan's bread.  In my research, I've been asking the questions:

• "what is healthier, light crust, or dark crust?"
• "what is the optimal temperature and time of baking to bake a loaf with the least possible loss of flavour?"
• "What is the best time and temperature for baking bread that will bake the interior of the loaf but keep the crust as light as possible in colour?"
• "Does baking bread in an optimal way have an effect on staling -- either minimizing staling, or hastening it?"

These questions show that I still have a lot to learn about bread.  Things are a bit more complex than you can imagine.  In casting about for answers, I've developed even more questions.  But I've also uncovered a few facts about crust.

The Thermal Effects of baking on Flavour

It has long been known (e.g. Johnson, J. and El-Dash, A. (1969). Role of Nonvolatile Compounds in Bread Flavor. J. Agr. Food Chem  pp 740-746) that the flavour of typical bread (unless you add sugar or other flavouring ingredients) comes from essentially two things: the fermentation of the loaf, which releases lots of volatile molecules, and the baking temperature.  

For now, let's just consider the thermal effects.  A lot of flavour is developed during the heating of the loaf, when the sugars present in the dough undergo the Maillard reaction and caramelize.

If you are going to have a loaf of bread with a very light crust, you are going to miss out on some of the flavour notes of a darker, roasted-grain crust.  It may be healthier (or it may not -- the jury is still out on this one).

The Four Stages of Bread Baking, derived from Crust Colour:

I've mentioned Onishi's article previously; here I'll discuss it a bit more.  Onishi and his team of bread researchers (mostly from Japan) used colorimetry to define four stages of bread baking:

1. pre-heating (surface temperature <110 ℃ )
2. Maillard reaction (110-114 ℃ ) (crust browning begins)
3. caramelization and carbonization (150-200 ℃ )
4. overbaking (surface temperature >200 ℃ )

Onishi determined that the colour of the crust was a good indicator that could be used to monitor and control baking conditions.  It must be remembered that the oven air temperature is not the same as loaf temperature.  Time, temperature, and ingredients (especially water) are key to predicting how a given recipe will behave.  Vapour within the oven and within the loaf also must be well understood, along with the resultant pressures these gases impart at various temperatures.  

Although they did derive a mathematical formula that explained the data they collected, Onishi's team indicated that breads with different ingredients may require individualized formula.  But they nevertheless proved that there was a linear relationship between the colour of their loaves and the weight loss, such that the darker the crust, the more the weight loss of the bread.

Onishi et. al. (2011) "Characteristic Coloring Curve for White Bread during Baking" Biosci. Biotechnol. Biochem. 75(2) pp 255-260

Optimizing Baking Temperatures for minimal weight loss

We cannot equate bread's weight loss with the loss of a bread's flavour.  As Johnson and El-Dash showed, flavour can be enhanced with temperature; and we know that dried food will sometimes concentrate flavours.  Nevertheless, bakers want to know that the loaves they are baking have a consistent weight.  And the first step toward having consistent flavour might be having a loaf that maintains its mass through the baking process, losing no more than around 8% (a number that I've seen in some articles) during baking due to evaporation.

One of the articles I read while researching crust was Therdthai, N. et. al. (2001) "Optimisation of the temperature profile in bread baking". ThaiScience

This essay examined the mechanized browning of white bread crusts in an industrial oven, to optimize the best temperatures for loaves in order to achieve a completely baked and finished crumb, with minimal weight loss, and with a subjectively pleasing crust.  Therdthai's team used tins to hold the dough, and had to take into account the way the tin had to be heated first before imparting the heat to the loaf.  Although they were looking only at white bread, their results are interesting.

"Intuitively, to reduce the weight loss, either the baking time and/or the baking temperature has to be reduced.  However, bread has to be properly baked."

I enjoyed reading this article.  I do not know how arbitrarily it defines the steps, but I was intrigued that Therdthai's research group proposed 3 stages of bread as it undergoes baking, but adjusted this to fit the 4-step model of modern industrial baking equipment:

1. Stage 1: 1/4 of the total baking time (6.84 min):   Optimum temperature 115 ℃ (239 ℉)

• Outer crumb increases 47 ℃ a minute to 60 ℃ (40℉ per minute to 140℉)
• this enhances enzyme activity and yeast growth resulting in oven rise
• starch is hydrolyzed by amylase, resulting in sucrose, glucose and maltose.  Yeast uses this and via fermentation produces carbon dioxide gas, which is dissolved into the water.  
• When the yeast is killed, the CO2 is released, resulting in volume increases by 1/3 original.
• surface skin loses elasticity, thickens, begins to brown in colour.

2. Stage 2: 1/2 of the total baking time (13.68 min): Optimum temperature: 130 ℃ (266 ℉), then 156 ℃ (312.8 ℉) for 27.4 min. each

• crumb temperature increases 5.4 ℃ per minute to 98.4 - 98.9 ℃.  (42 ℉ per minute to 209 - 210 ℉)
• all reactions are maximized, including moisture evaporation, starch gelatinization and protein coagulation.
• (starch gelatinization should be 0.98-0.99% complete at internal temperatures of 95-98 ℃)
• Dough becomes crumb in structure from outer to inner portions by penetrating heat.
• Most of the weight loss comes from the second part of this stage, from water evaporation at the outermost layer

3. Stage 3: 1/4 of the total baking time (6.84 min): Optimum temperature: 176 ℃ for 27.4 min (348.8 ℉)

• a typical browning crust is observed when crust temperature reaches 150-205 ℃ (284 - 401 ℉) by Maillard reaction
• the volatilization of organic substances is designated as the bake-out-loss; but there is less overall weight loss, compared to the previous stage.
• Internal temperature will increase to 100 ℃.  This completes all starch gelatinization (which should be 0.98-0.99% complete at temperatures of 95-98 ℃)

Total baking time: 27.4 minutes

Very little more information was gleaned from comparing this article to another ThaiScience article that used neural networks to optimize the baking time and temperature.  ThaiScience is an online, mostly free database of engineering and science articles.  There are a number of bread-related articles I'd like to read. 

Notes to Myself

• Try the oregano loaf again, this time with a regular sourdough starter, and a slightly higher hydration. Would you combine this taste with walnuts, to get an extra-purplish loaf?  Or is this scent and flavour entirely claimed by pizza?
• I was astonished to learn that Onishi and his team believe that the yeast is quite active when the bread is initially put into the oven, just before they expire.  A lot of the oven spring comes from CO2 expansion caused by yeast in the minutes just before they are baked to smithereens. I had assumed otherwise.

Summer Sourdough and another Multigrain Loaf

Dog Days of Summer

My doggie is laying on the cool floor panting.  We've de-thatched her many times in recent days, brushing away great gobs of old fur from her coat, and every day's walk ends in a cooling swim in pond, river or creek.  But still the heat is getting to her.

It occurs to me that perhaps I ought to be de-thatching my other 'pet' too.

Summer is upon us, and my sourdough peaks a lot faster than it does in autumn, winter and spring.  The hot, humid days get my 100% wild starter -- which usually sits out on the counter at room temperature -- to double a lot quicker than I expect (and all too often before I myself am ready).  An overnight rise of a refresher often has me disappointed as I wake up on my day off around 0500 to find that it has already passed its optimal time for leavening dough.

Curiously, I don't find the same "too-speedy peaking" happening when I experiment with a "stiff starter".  Example:  on the evening of first full day of summer 2012, third day of a heat-wave, I refreshed my sourdough with 1 TBSP of starter and 200g each of water and ww flour. At the same time, I used 200g of the same starter I had taken that 1 TBSP out of, and added no more water, only 100g more ww to make a "stiff starter".  In the morning, that 100% starter was already past using -- but the stiff starter was optimal for making dough.

This is an interesting thought: perhaps the way to keep one's sourdough viable on the counter is to variously adjust the hydration for the sourdough's seasonal moodiness.  Is this what our ancestors also discovered?  Is this how they kept their sourdoughs going through the seasons, through the years, through the decades, through the centuries, through the millennia, before refrigeration was invented?  I am not suggesting that any one bread-making wild leaven culture has been passed on this long.  But certainly techniques were given to the next generation after generation, bread itself was passed through to whole new populations of people on the planet, and people with similar inclinations as me fermented their brayed grains just as I do, adjusting it to their needs.  Perhaps I'm finally starting to live in concert with my own wild culture.

Perhaps it is the beginning of confidence that I am finally finding my Way.

Refrigerating the Sourdough

Before I went away this past week, I placed my sourdough in the fridge because I wasn't going to be around to tend it.  Generally when I'm home the wild culture is sitting there on the counter, reminding me to use it or refresh it.  I'm always sneaking a peak at it, and these days, waving away the fruit flies.

Putting it in the fridge was a natural step (many if not most people will keep their sourdough there and simply refresh it weekly), but it is a step that I don't want to repeat too often -- and not only because it changes the inhabitants of the wild culture, changing the taste, as I have previously said.  Not, the big reason I want to avoid refrigeration of my sourdough is because of what happened when I returned.  I took the wild yeast out of the fridge, refreshed it, and watched it closely.  The cold fridge must have stunned it.  It took three freshenings before it even began to regain its previous strength.

In the meantime, I made loaves with the wayward sourdough but I also used a bit of extra commercial yeast.

Here is the latest attempt at making a multigrain loaf.  This time I added some ingredients to the mixture in the beginning (last time I made a multigrain loaf, I tried to get the gluten to form first, and added the other grains late in the stretching and folding).  This time, I didn't add as much multigrain.  I think that this is appropriate, for this bread.

• 100% ww flour
• 80% water
• 2% salt
• 20% sourdough starter
• 1/2 tsp yeast
• 26g homemade dried malt
• 30g sunflower seeds
• 36g roasted soybeans

The extra yeast was tossed in because this starter was stunned.  I had just returned from a visit to Ottawa, and the starter was in the fridge for several days.  I took it out and refreshed it, but it wasn't quite up to its bubbly efficiency.  It will likely take a few more refreshes before it is able to raise loaves the way I want it to.  So for now I'm just adding some yeast to the mixture.

Results

This dough didn't see a lot of rise, until it hit the proofing baskets.  Then, after about 2 hours, it was ready to be placed into the oven.  I could have increased the hydration by 5 % easily.  The dough wasn't all that stretchy while I was folding and teasing it into shape.

But I like the results.  Tastes nice with cheese or with peanut butter.  It is crunchy in places, but the amount of seeds and extra grains is just about right. 


A darn good loaf.

Notes to Myself

• Try keeping your wild starter on the counter at a much denser concentration than the usual 100%, for the summer months.  My stiff starter is working fine at 50% hydration when it is this hot and humid.  Less water means the yeast and the leavening bacteria work a bit slower.
• Alternatively, you could experiment with concentrations of >100% for the winter months.  The forums of The Fresh Loaf contain lots of discussions from bread enthusiasts who have tried liquid yeast.  I haven't got to that stage yet.
• You really don't need a lot of different grains in order to call a bread a 'multigrain loaf'.  What is the optimal amount of other grains that can be added to bread dough?
• Your sourdough may have been stunned because of the refrigeration -- but there is also another possibility.  Just before leaving, you put some wheat germ into the mixture, something you also never did before.  That extra 5% may have changed the entire culture too.
• I have broken my second camera, and currently borrow my wife's.  But I am warned not to "dough it all up".  I don't understand the flash settings on her camera, and it always leaves a shadow.
  
  Sigh.  Bread blogging is hell  on digital cameras.