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?

Mushroom Soup Bread, or Soup Made with Mushroom Soup

Mushroom Soup Bread

or: Soup Made with Mushroom Soup

This bread was a serendipitous invention (aka, crazy idea).

I had been grocery shopping, and my wife was dismayed when I got home and she discovered I had purchased "more mushroom soup cans".  I guess we had a lot in the cupboard already.  I decided to make some bread using some mushroom soup for hydration.

I measured the mush from the mushroom soup can to be 289g, and the milk that the can held when the mush was out of it was 327g.  I stirred this together on a pan on the stove for a few minutes -- not long enough for the soup get thick, but long enough to break up most of the "mushroom soup boogers", as my wife calls them.  Then I took it off the heat and let it sit while I measured the other ingredients.


Pup Loaf Ingredient Ratios
What would those ingredients be, and what ratios, for this 'crazy invention'?  Well, I had been reading various studies recently, where some food labs were testing bread for hydration rates, based on how much bran is included, or other ingredients like herbs or oils, something that I've been curious about lately.  Most of these labs, I discovered, make what is known as a "Pup loaf."

Now, a "Pup loaf" is a laboratory-made bread with standardized set of ingredients, for test purposes.  Stanley Cauvain's "Bread Making: Improving Quality" (which can be partially read in Google Books) gives a straight-dough recipe for a "pup loaf", based on the American Association of Cereal Chemists (AACC)'s lab method 10-10B.  One of the articles I read used the 1984 version of this straight dough method, with a slight modification, and I calculated ingredient percentages from that, with my soup bread:

• 100% wwflour
• 70% hydration
• 3.5% yeast
• 1.75% salt
• 8% honey

However, I ended up not using many of these amounts.

When my soup was made, it measured 612g, and that would be my hydration of 70%.  That meant I had to use 874g of whole wheat flour.  The yeast that was being described was supposed to be 3.5% of the total, so I should have used 31g.  I felt that this was going to be far too much, so I cut this back to 9g (1%).

The salt I was supposed to use was to have been 15g.  But the soup already contains 850mg of salt per 125ml; the can is 284ml, so the total salt is 19g 1.9g (I originally miscalculated the salt for the bread to be 70g, meaning I could add 51g more.  Obviously, something was wrong with that calculation, but I didn't check it.  Intuitively I just ignored it.  I should have checked it twice; Josh, in the comments below, has corrected my math, and has pointed out that it was the lack of salt that made this bread taste so bland).  And there were other ingredients in this soup can (like MSG), that I didn't know the full effect of.  I didn't want to add any more salt.

And I didn't add any sweetener, either; I was thinking that the milk's lactose would make the loaf sweet enough.


Here is a full list of the can's ingredients:

• water
• mushrooms
• canola or soybean oil
• enriched wheat flour
• corn starch
• salt
• cream
• modified milk ingredients
• soy protein isolate
• monosodium glutamate
• tomato paste
• spice
• yeast extract
• dehydrated garlic

Method
The method also details how the loaf should bulk ferment, be punched down, proof, and the times and temperatures for baking.  I adjusted all these, because the "Pup Loaf" is only 100g of flour, and I was making a larger loaf.

So basically I'm saying that I used the "Pup Loaf" recipe to find the hydration rate for my dough, and disregarded virtually all other ingredients and methods.

When mixing the dough by hand, I found it to feel quite dry.  It took some kneading to get it all incorporated, about 10 minutes or so.

I bulk fermented it for 90 minutes in the bread setting of my Excalibur Dehydrator, then I turned it out onto the counter, folded it and formed a boule.

This boule was going to rest in a basket to proof 45 minutes.  I lined the basket with wwflour and some cracked wheat.

 

With 25 minutes to go, I noticed that it had risen substantially again, so I pre-heated the oven at that point.

Just before baking, I spritzed water on it and scored it.

The loaf was baked with steam for 45 minutes at 415 degrees F.



Results

The loaf had a nice oven rise.  It held together okay.



Next Day Report
I cracked into this bread this morning for a taste.  The crust is extremely hard.  The crumb is extremely dense.  And the taste really puts the "blah" in "bland".  The soup advertises that it is "made with fresh mushrooms", right on the can.  Well where are they?  I saw a few small chunks when I was kneading the bread, but in this tight crumb, I can't see any of them now.

I'm thinking that the hydration level should be increased to 75% at least; and perhaps some water rather than completely milk would work better for bread.  And the salt factor: it doesn't taste salty, but you sure don't want to add some more salt.  I generally add some cayenne powder to the soup when I'm eating it as soup, so perhaps that also might help give the bread here some flavour.

But likely, just likely, this whole mushroom soup bread is simply a bad idea.

Notes to Myself

• If you ever make this again: to the can of milk you add to the soup, also try adding as much as 44g more water to bring the hydration level to 75% (otherwise, the bread is so dry, you will want to dip it into, uh, soup).
  And add a bit of cayenne powder, let's say about 1/4 - 1/2 tsp.
• You also bought too much ginger paste at the grocery store.  A Google Search for bread and ginger paste brought this recipe for 'Greek Rolls' to my attention, by Cholena at Group Recipes.  You might want to try this recipe too -- maybe as a bread.
• I suppose that if you can do this with mushroom soup, you can do it with any soup -- even home-made soups.  Consider this to be the better option -- but be certain you have the right amount of salt for bread, so when making soups that might be added to bread, be sure you measure the water and the salt you add, so you get an idea of how much salt you are adding to the bread!