Maple Fenugreek 60% Whole Wheat with Rye Sourdough

Maple Fenugreek 40% Rye Sourdough

Philosophical Blather

Sometimes one just wants to set aside recipes, and try something untried.

Of course, there is nothing new under the sun.  Everything has been done, no doubt countless times, whether or not you believe in eternal recurrence.  Even something utterly experimental comes from a question asked by the prepared mind.  We all stand on the shoulders of giants.  And midgets too, for that matter.  The whole past is a pyramid, and we alone stand on the apex, for the briefest of moments.

Blah blah.  Whatever.

Context

I was simply refreshing some sourdough, when I decided to use up some of the 100% rye sourdough.  I had some fenugreek that I'd malted a while back, and it was sitting in my fridge.  I'd wanted to use it in other ways, but other breads had intervened.  Then, we had just recently finished making our tiny home-made batch of maple syrup in our back yard.  Now I wanted some rye bread, but I didn't require a 100% rye loaf.  So I decided to put it all together.

I'm basing this more or less on Hooda & Jood's Fenugreek Whole Wheat that I made a while ago, only I'm using malted fenugreek here, and much less, by weight.  Instead of honey, I've got maple syrup.  And instead of only whole wheat flour, I'm using about 40% rye.  Plus some sourdough.

Ingredients

• (200g) Rye Sourdough (discard) @ 100% hydration
• provides 100g hydration, and 100g rye flour
• 60% (276g) WW flour
• 40% (186g+1/2 of the sourdough, so 100g = 286g) Rye Flour
• 70% (293g+1/2 of the sourdough, so 100g = 393g) Water
• 1.75% (10g) Salt
• 3.5% (11g) Yeast
• 8% (45g) Maple Syrup
• 8% (45g) Malted Fenugreek
• 8% (45g) Oil

Method

In terms of method, I'm mixing the wwflour, the yeast, the water and the maple syrup together with the sourdough discards, and I'm letting it sit for 1 hour covered in my bulk fermenter, the Excalibur Dehydrator (which gets a lot more use as a bread dough proofer than it does as a dehydrator, at least this time of the year).

Then, using techniques gleaned from the V8 juice recipe I made earlier, I'm sprinkling oil atop it, and the salt, and adding the rye flour and fenugreek malts, folding it all in.

This is then folded into tins.  Another proofing of about 60 minutes, and it is baked for 45 minutes at 400 degrees F.  

After about 30 minutes, I took the loaf out and brushed it with some yogurt because the top seemed to me to be getting dried out, the dough was coming away from the tin due to shrinkage.  Instead of oven spring, I had oven droop. 

Results

This bread has a lot of fenugreek scent to it.  It came out of the pan nicely, and the undercarriage of the loaf seems to show some nice signs of fermentation.  Despite the fact that it didn't rise high from the pan, remember that the dough was somewhat smaller than the volume of the tin to begin with, so it certainly has risen in proofing.  I may have caused some of the droop by taking it out of the oven prematurely to brush yogurt on top.

Crumb Impressions

Wow.  This is one unusual tasting bread.  It is not bad, per se.  Just nothing like anything I would have expected.  The taste is subtle and complex.  I tried some of the crust, and became wordless.  I buttered it, and said "hmmm".  I tried some with maple butter, and a sound like a groan came from my throat.  I sliced some thin, and toasted it, and the complex tastes evolved to a crunchiness and a follow-through sensation after mastication of moistness, sweetness.  I tried some with a bit of old cheese.  The bread complements it.  I just don't know what to say about it.  "Eminently edible with an unusual texture and unexpected taste", I guess.

There are a few pockets of sweetness, which indicates to me that the maple syrup was not well mixed in.  On the other hand, the sweetness isn't overly mapley.  The fenugreek certainly gives a nice scent to the loaf, but that might not be to everyone's enjoyment.  To me, it isn't off-putting; and I don't think it adds much in the way of taste.  You still have the broad canvas of wheat, the undercoating of rye: those are the main flavours.  The fenugreek is there, but it isn't overpowering, it is more like shadows within the overall picture, it adds an extra dimension.

I took a few photos inside, but the flash doesn't do this bread any justice.  The crumb is very unusual, with that malted fenugreek.  Outside on the deck, even in the earliest morning light after a night of rain, the malts could be seen better.

Maybe this bread has some possibilities.  But will my wife eat it?  Will she even try it?

No.  Because last time she tried fenugreek in bread, she had gas.  That, for her, kills the sale of even trying this bread.

Notes to Myself

• I have read somewhere that rye bread should sit in the final proofing about two hours without being touched, or it may fall.  Another hour of proofing might have helped this loaf to rise even further.
• I should not have taken the loaf out to paint yogurt on it at the 30 minute mark.  I thought that by then, the bread would have set somewhat, but I was mistaken.  The loaf fell because of it.  Better might have been to cover it gently with some foil if you thought it was burning or drying out.
• Maple syrup and fenugreek?  How did you imagine that would go together?
• Does fenugreek give you gas?  I doubt it, but every body's microflora is different.  Of course, I fart so much, I barely notice any more.  It is a happy time for me.

Hooda and Jood's Fenugreek Whole Wheat Bread

 Hooda and Jood's Fenugreek Whole Wheat Bread

"Organoleptic": involving a sense organ
When he was younger than two years old, and soaking everything about the world in through his senses, I would sometimes lift my son and carry him to the spice cupboard, to smell every herb and spice we used then for cooking.  "Cinnamon" I would say as he sniffed the tiny bottles or bags full of aromatics.  "Cardomon.  Ginger.  Oregano.  Rosemary."  He quickly learned to associate the scents with the names.

Likely somewhere in your experience, you too have gained familiarity with these scents, and the names of these very common kitchen spices.  But there are other spices that are a little bit more uncommon, and the name does not immediately conjure up the scent or the taste from most western kitchens.

Fenugreek
One of these spices that remains somewhat uncommon to North American households is Fenugreek.  It does appear as a constituent of some curries, but it would be difficult for someone unfamiliar with its flavour and its scent to pick it out of a curry lineup (which may also contain onions, ginger, garlic, turmeric, paprika and other ingredients) and say with certainty, "that is fenugreek."  Both the leaves and the seeds are used for flavouring.  Here I am considering only the seed.

Personally, when I take a small mouthful of Fenugreek seed, I taste legumes.  But fenugreek also has the familiarity of curry.  Food chemists say that Sotolon is the ingredient in fenugreek that gives it its flavour note -- "caramel-like at low concentration levels to currylike at high concentrations", but may interact with other ingredients to appear "burnt, spicy"  (Marsili: Sensory-directed flavour analysis).  According to the Dictionary of Food Ingredients, fenugreek has a "maple-like flavour and burnt sugar taste," and for this reason it is used not only in curry but also in "imitation maple flavour, chutney and pickles."  Unless you've tasted it directly, it is difficult to describe.  It is a unique spice that deserves to be more widely known.

The Fenugreek Bread
My decision to make it into a bread had everything to do with an article that I found from "Nutrition and Food Science: 2005; 35, 3/4, by Shalini Hooda and Sudesh Jood, entitled "Effect of fenugreek flour blending on physical, organoleptic and chemical characteristics of wheat bread".  Ever since reading the article, I'd wanted to try to make it.

I did not know at the time that India already has a bread called Khakhra made with beans and wheat and fenugreek leaves (Kasoori methi).  I suppose that this bread is nothing like Khakhra.

Hooda and Jood's bread uses fenugreek seeds, and is designed to improve wheat's ability to deliver balanced protein for the human diet. Fenugreek contains lots of Lysine, the protein that is the main delimiting amino acid in wheat.  Fenugreek seeds are also said to contain good amounts of Folic Acid, Vitamin D, Magnesium, Manganese, and Selenium.  Fenugreek supplements also are said to lower the insulin spike following a carbohydrate meal -- so fenugreek begins to sound like it might be ideal for a health bread. 

From Hooda and Jood's article, I took the message that anything over 15% fenugreek seed flour in the recipe would neither be pleasing to the eye or tastebuds.  However, I simply ground up my fenugreek seeds (and probably not finely enough); Hooda and Jood suggested that soaking, germinating and grinding the seeds improved the seed's acceptability among consumers.  I didn't have the time to germinate the seeds, so this bread is actually Hooda and Jood's least favourite form of the healthgiving bread recipe.  But if it shows promise, I might consider sprouting some next time I try this.

Ingredients based on Hooda & Jood's Pup Loaves:

• 100% whole wheat flour 460g
• 3.5% yeast 16g (Note: I changed this and only used 9g)
• 1.75% salt 8g
• 8% honey 37g
• 70g water 322g
• 15% fenugreek 69g

Method based on AACC Straight Dough Method, revised by me on the fly:

• Grind up the fenugreek (I should have milled it finer, here I just ran it through my coffee grinder)

• Mix all ingredients.  (It takes some kneading to get it all incorporated.  The freshly ground fenugreek smells interesting!)

• Bulk ferment 90 minutes in warm Excalibur Dehydrator on bread setting

• Turn it out on a counter and fold it gently, then form a boule.  The dough is not that elastic, and it tends to break if you bend it too much.

• Proof 45 minutes

• Score and spritz; then bake on a stone 40 minutes at 415 degrees F on a hot stone with steam

Results

The bread, when it was cooking, smelled very interesting, but the bread did not proof well, and had little oven spring.  The gluten of the whole wheat wanted to tear easily when it contained 15% fenugreek.  The loaf is small.  Gentler handling would have been warranted.  No-knead styles of baking and handling might benefit breads made with this much fenugreek.

I let this loaf sit out over night on the table, and noted that it still retained an interesting and I'll say pleasant aroma in the morning.  I sliced it open, and the scent predominated.

This is a tight-crumbed bread, takes some work to chew, but it is quite pleasant tasting.  It is fenugreek flavoured, to be sure, but unless one is familiar with that flavour, that describes very little.  This is a bread that needs to be taste-tested.

The cat became quite interested in what I was doing when I was slicing up this bread and photographing it.  I suspect it had a little to do with the scent of the loaf but more to do with the cat's own curious nature -- he wanted to see what I was up to.  He had just come in from his nocturnal journeys, and he wanted some attention.  He wanted me to pet him while he ate his breakfast, so he could warm up and get outside again.  When I was more interested in the bread, he photobombed a few of the shots.

Notes to Myself

• This is a most interesting tasting, gently scented bread that deserves more experimentation.
• Try adding more water, bringing the hydration level to 75% next time.
• Try a no-knead technique, like Lahey's long bulk fermentation, and use a gentle handling of the dough.
• Mill the fenugreek seeds, don't just grind them.  The finer they are, the better chance the bread will behave as a bread, and give an adequate rise.
• Better yet: germinate the seeds, and then dry them and grind them up.  Some of fenugreek's enzymes have been studied extensively and found to be of immense importance, but they are released when the seeds are germinated.  Try sprouting the fenugreek 48 hours, like Hooda and Jood suggest.
• What if you used maple-syrup as a sweetener, instead of honey?  Would the "maple-like" qualities of the fenugreek be enhanced?