Sex Bread Better than Viagra for Prolonged Erections

Whole Wheat, Rye and Maca Root Bread
(and another variation on the Tartine Semolina, in the foreground)

SEX BREAD!

If you've ever read my breadblog before, no doubt you are now looking to see if I've finally decided to monetize it.  Nope.  Still doing this for just for fun.  But the headline, "Sex Bread" is sort of a spoof on the kind of thing you might see in blogs that try to draw in people (usually on stupid, inane pretexts).  But the fact is, this bread might just improve your sex life.

The other day I picked up some cream-coloured Peruvian Maca Root flour at a Bulk Food Store.   This organic root is supposedly dried and pulverized by an ancient and traditional process.  You add it to things you cook or bake, and it is supposed to provide nutrition and stamina -- for when you go hiking in the Peruvian Andes.  You might need it if you're taking the trek to Machu Picchu.

The Mists of Machu Picchu

But there are other mountains that we need to climb, personal mountains.  For example, I have it on good source (the people who sell it as supplements!) that maca root enhances sexual performance and relieves symptoms of menopause.

But the jump-on-the-bandwagon websites will warn you that the alkaloids in the root act like human hormones, so too much might disrupt thyroid function or even interfere with libido.  Other sites warn about possible side-effects of tachycardia, hyperthyroidism, headaches, heartburn, mood swings, or hot flashes.

So how much should you take?  One website suggests 450mg supplements 3x/day with food (1.35g).  I have about 150g in 2 loaves of bread, so lets say 75g per loaf. If there are 20 slices of bread in these small loaves, and if the maca is more or less evenly distributed, there should be less than 4g per slice.  If I eat 4 slices a day, and if the claims that it is a natural viagra are correct, well then I should be walking erect.

But the Wiki on Maca downplays the dangers of higher doses.  The root is eaten by Peruvians as it has been for years, the same way we eat turnip (i.e. usually we cook it before we eat it, and it is ubiquitous in our diet but not as much of a staple as, say, potatoes are).  And I suspect the Peruvians are similarly sexy as the rest of us, with or without the root.


Maca Root Powder Bread
The stuff smells very interesting and unique, and you get a sense, when you are dumping it in the bowl with the other flours, that it is very healthy.  There is something in it that has novelty: imagine the novelty experienced when someone from western Europe first inhaled the aroma of coffee beans, or cocoa.  It is not exactly that strong: it is gentler like carob.  But there is something interesting about it.  I don't smell butterscotch, like some people have imagined.

The maca root flour is creamy-coloured, compared to the rye and the whole wheat flours
and the scent is uniquely interesting

The dough was tightly elastic, and perhaps a bit too dry to properly fold

The breads came out singing, and the scent was fascinating

To be more accurate about what I used: I only had 158g of Maca Root Flour; I used 700g of whole wheat, and the rest was rye flour (142g).  The rest of the ingredients (water, salt) are the same as any 75% hydrated Tartine Loaf.

A Variation on Tartine Semolina Bread
As for the Semolina bread, I've tried this once before and it didn't work, because I was using Semolina wheat hearts and not true flour.  I still had some of those semolina wheat hearts, however, so I used it again.  300g of AP flour, 700g of semolina cream of wheat, and then I added 200g of whole wheat until it felt better.  I didn't follow the rest of the instructions for the Semolina loaf (roasted seeds in the dough), but I did sprinkle a few fennel seeds on top while it was proofing.

The semolina, sitting in an island in the middle of some sourdough-inoculated water

One of the Semolina breads, singing, fresh from the oven, giving off a scent of fennel seed

All the proofed dough baskets were retarded overnight in the fridge for approximately eight hours, and were baked within 30 minutes of taking them from the cold.

Results

The Maca Loaf's Crumb
Both loaves taste great.  The maca root loaf has a most unique scent that is hard to place, but strangely familiar.  I asked my wife if she could identify the scent.  "Wood," she said.  "But a good wood: like mahogany."  I don't know if I'd agree with that (and please, no jokes about my wood), but the smell is redolent of a recent happy memory, and there is a sort of elegance to the recollection.  Describing a scent is extraordinarily difficult.
 

My brother-in-law was visiting, and I asked him to smell the bread and tell me what he thought the scent was.  His face took on a puzzled look.  The smell was familiar, he said, like what one would put in a rye bread.  "I don't know what it is," he said, "but I know I don't like it."  I think that he was somehow identifying it with caraway, but of course there is no caraway in it.


The Semolina Bread's Crumb

The Semolina bread's crust is crackly crisp, and I cut into this loaf while it was still smoking hot.  My wife likes it, but feels the need to toast this bread twice: she feels the crumb is too moist.  I like it, and it reminds me of a crunchy Italian loaf, or a crusty baguette.  My wife likes the fact that I didn't overdo the fennel seeds.  She would not have liked them in the dough, but they are acceptable on the crust. 

I am eating both breads with goat cheese and ripe tomatoes from my garden.  Wonderful!

Notes to Myself

• The maca root and whole wheat dough was difficult to fold, so the hydration could have been substantially increased.  It was such a tight little ball of dough! 
• The crust and crumb of both loaves turned out excellent: the maca root loaf is a lot more supple than the pictures would indicate.  Both loaves toast nicely.
• Mostly I can eat bread and then fall asleep from post-prandial narcolepsy, or carb loading.  But imagine a loaf of bread where this doesn't happen.  Instead, you eat the bread and feel horny, and your energy level goes up, and your stamina increases.  Kind of the reverse of 'the munchies,' the snacking hunger that one supposedly gets after smoking marijuana.  Imagine a maca root loaf where you eat the bread and get hyped up on exorphins in whole wheat and the natural viagra of maca, and then just want to jump into bed with the nearest warm body. 
  
  It's like an aphrodisiac bread.
  
  Well, we can dream, can't we?

Everyday Bread #30 - Making Bread with the Sourdough Discard

Making Bread with the Sourdough Discard

Since beginning to refresh my mother starter again, I've been faced with the familiar dilemma of what to do with the sourdough discard.  Must be the Scotch in me, but I really hate throwing this stuff out.  It seems like such a waste!  So I did a quick search of the bread blogs this morning to see what others are doing with their discard.  Seems like others are making pancakes with it.  But I want bread, dammit!

I did find one recipe for a 'Sourdough Discard Bread' (from the blogger of 'Bread and Whine').  I decided to try that.  It combines the spent sourdough with some commercial yeast, to make an 'acceptable' hybrid bread.  The recipe calls for all purpose flour.  I decided to make it the way the recipe is written before modifying it for whole grains, but that already has one strike against it in my book.

There is another idea that I like better on principle.  This is the 'No Discard Bread Recipe', which uses only 2 TBSP of the starter from the fridge -- a starter that gets refreshed once a week only, and used up via this 2 TBSP subtraction method.  This comes from the recipe section of the site, 'Sourdough.com'


1.  The Sourdough Discard Bread is the quicker of the two recipes.

Here is the recipe card I made up, from the Bread & Whine site:

unrefreshed sourdough starter    1 cup
rye flour 50 g ( 1/2 cup )
all purpose flour 450 g ( 4 cups )
instant yeast  1/2 tsp
lukewarm water 1 1/2 cups
fine sea salt  2 tsp

Add rye to starter and yeast, and mix
Add water and salt.
Add 3 cups of the AP flour.
Add more until the dough is moist and tacky but not sticky.
Knead 5-7 minutes. 
Set to rise until doubled (3-4 hours).
Loosely shape into batard shape.
Rest 15 min.
Perform final shaping.
Set on parchment gently.
Rise until proofed.
Bake 425 F on baking stone, 20-30 minutes with steam.

    Because of the commercial yeast, no doubt, the mixture rose to double just at the right time, at the 4 hour mark.  But it was then that I realized I had not yet kneaded the dough at all.  Too late?  I did try the spatula scoop, pull and fold method within the bowl, but the dough was really very wet. 

    I am thinking that my starter's hydration is not what the recipe calls for: I could have used much more flour.  I should have added some at this point.  But I did not.

    It did not rise after the 15 minute mark.  I thought perhaps it still would, so I set it to proof for an hour on some parchment paper, under the inverted bowl.  About 30 minutes later, I intended to preheat the oven and baking stone, and noticed that the dough was spilling out the sides.

    There was only one thing to do -- and it likely wouldn't save the bread.  I had to scrape it into a pan.
    I did so, but tossed it in the oven when it was preheated, without further proofing, thinking the bread was now hopeless to save anyway.

    After 30 minutes at 425 degrees F, I removed the pan.  The dough had risen in the oven, and it had ripped in several areas while doing it.  Once out of the pan, I set it back in the oven on the hot stone and cooling oven for 10 minutes.  This is a bread failure, of course.

The crumb looks like it wanted to develop; on the other hand, there is a soft gooey spot on the bottom edge of the loaf.  The bread smells a little sour, but it doesn't taste that way.  When you toast it, the crust is quite nice.  If it weren't for that one undercooked area, this bread might have turned out okay, despite all the other problems I had with it.

Notes to Myself:

• Bake this one at a hotter oven temperature: e.g. 475 degrees F.
• Knead it when it calls for it!
• Try the same amount of flour, but use whole wheat, in the hopes that it will soak up some more of the dough moisture.

2. The No Discard Method of Bread Baking takes a lot longer

Here is the recipe card I made up, from information gleaned on the 'Sourdough.com' web site.

1. 2 TSP cold starter
   dissolve in 1/2 c water
   add 1/2 c flour
   cover 10-14 hrs.
2. Add 1 c water
   1 1/2 c flour
   cover 10-14 hrs
3. Whisk 2 1/2 c flour, 1 tsp salt
   Add to mixture, but don't knead.
   cover 10-14 hrs
4. Knead and form dough.
   Loosely cover, let rise, bake.


If you start on Day 1 in am, you will bake next evening.
If you start on Day 1 in pm, you bake in 2 days in morning.

I mixed up 2 TBSP of the spent Rye Starter, but I added some all purpose flour (to compare this loaf with the one I made yesterday with spent starter).

After 10 hours, this starter and flour and water mix actually separated; no rising had occurred. I mixed up the second part of the recipe.

After another 10 hours, this hadn't risen more than a millimeter or two.  But it did look a little foamy.  I mixed up the third part of the recipe.  This time, the resultant mixture was a lot firmer.

After 10 hours this time, I see some real rising of dough (although it still hasn't quite doubled).  It is of dough consistency now, though.  It seems a bit wet still to me, but I can knead it and shape it.  The heat of my hands was making it too tacky, though. 

I folded it quickly and put it in a pan.  I proofed it 45 minutes under a towel, then preheated the oven.  When the oven was heated, I stuck it in for 475 degrees F for 30 minutes, with a wet top but no steam.

I think it could have proofed a bit longer, but I had to get to sleep to get up for work the next day, I had to act or lose the loaf timing entirely. So there wasn't much oven spring, but it cracked open along my score line nicely. This loaf still has a faint sourdough scent to it, but not as much as the other loaf.

The crumb of this loaf is fairly dense.  There are strange pockets of space riddled through it, mostly toward the top where some rapid expansion took place.  I suspect that this is a symptom of uneven leavening, a telltale sign that my wild yeast needed more time to do its job.  I only let it work 10 hours each stage, which was the minimal amount of time.  I really ought to try this recipe again with more active wild yeast, from a more thriving yeast community in my original sourdough mother starter -- and with the longer fermentation stages.

I also think that this loaf could have benefited from a longer proofing.  And a lower temperature but longer baking time.  This recipe had no times or temperatures given, so I had to guess or use other recipes times and temperatures.  I just guessed, but now I would guess that sourdough will bake better on lower temperatures and longer times.  I need to research this idea.

Despite the way the interior of those expansion bubbles, this loaf appears completely baked, though, unlike the earlier 'discard bread'.  But I find the crust of this one more rubbery in texture, and I'm not keen on that. It might have benefited from steam in the oven, rather than just wetting the surface with water.  It also looks kind of blonde, with an amateurish sourdough bread colour and texture to the crust.  I have seen sourdough breads that do not have this amateurish look to them, and that would be my ideal that I would work toward.

Verdict: both of these loaves deserve another try, once I get organized with my sourdough starter.

Notes to Myself:

• Look up how long, and at what temperature, sourdough loaves are thought best to bake.
• Research crusts of sourdoughs, and how the pros get beyond their amateurish blondie colour and sourdough crust textures.