The Master of the Five Grains

Title.....terrible reference to an 80's fantasy novel and Megadeth.............nothing to do with bread.

Ok, I am going to post another bread I made using the famous sourdough starter. I am putting a hold on the sausage making for a time, until I can eat through the back log of wieners in the freezer. With Summer here and a recently aquired BBQ, I am sure I will prevail over the abundance of ground pork occupying the icebox. So onwards and upwards with another session of leavening.

Todays feature bread will be a German style 5 grain loaf. Germans and Austrians are pretty nuts about their whole grains and seeds. I don't think you could pass off what we call store bought bread in either of those countries very easily. Gooey, chewy, soft plastic bread is not going to cut it with the Germanic type. Whole grain, hearty bread is the fast track to any Bavarian or Tyrolean you might hold dear to your heart. This particular recipe has five grains: Rye, Brown Rice, Corn, Oats and Flax. Two seeds in this dough are more important than the others. The flax seeds come from the linen plant and are full of linoleic enzymes which are very good for digestion. The other important grain is the cooked rice. It will help the final bread retain some precious moisture and keep the bread from turning into a brick. Make sure you cook the rice thoroughly, even slightly past done, to ensure the bread isn't hard on the teeth.

Grain Elevator Music: Electric Wizard, Black Masses (2010)

5 Kernbrot

Firm Starter (made a day in advance)
-1 Cup Unbleached Bread Flour
-1 1/4 Cup Sourdough Starter

Combine flour and starter, form into a firm dough and let sit in a covered bowl for 3-4 hours in cool place. Refrigerate overnight

Dough
-Firm Starter from day before
-4 2/3 Cups Unbleached Bread Flour
-1 Cup Coarse Rye Flour
-1/2 Cup Cooked Brown Rice (You can substitute with Rice Flour, but the bread will be less moist)
-1/3 Cup Polenta
-1/3 Cup Rolled Oats
-1/4 Ground Flax Seeds
-2 1/2 Tsp. Salt
-1 Tbs. Honey
-2 1/2 Cups Cold Water
-3 Tbs. Whole Flax Seeds (optional to sprinkle on surface before baking)

Combine all ingredients in a large bowl and mix thoroughly. Turn the dough out onto a slightly floured surface and knead for 15 minutes till you form a smooth surfaced dough. Place the dough in a bowl, cover with cling film and let stand in a cool place for 4-5 hours to ferment. Refrigerate overnight. Remove the bowl from fridge the following day and allow the dough to warm for at least an hour before using it. Divide the dough into 2-3 pieces and form into bread shapes. Place the loaves into breadforms or on a slightly floured board and cover with a plastic bag. Allow 3-4 hour proofing in a warm place then refrigerate overnight. Remove bread from fridge at least 1 hour before baking. Pre-heat oven to 475 F. and place an empty baking pan on the shelf below your baking stone. Turn the risen loaves out onto a floured bakers peel and slash the surface of the bread. I forgot to do this....but now is when you can brush the surface with water and sprinkle on some flax seeds. Slide the loaves into the oven and throw 1 cup of warm water into the baking pan. Bake for 5 minutes at 475, the turn down the oven to 450 F and bake for another 25-35 minutes until the crust is dark brown and hollow sounding when thumped.

This sourdough starter keeps on producing very flavorful breads with near perfect air pockets in the crumb. This bread is perfect with just butter, as well as most tart jams and marmalades.

Naturally Leavened Rye Bread

Having put so much effort into capturing, feeding, growing and loving my natural yeast friends, I will now put said 5 day starter into action producing a sourdough rye loaf. I guess all things that take a long time are worth the trouble, because in the end that extra time and effort will translate into (in the case of bread) FLAVOR. Now I have already eaten the bread that I am going to describe today and let me tell you.....it was amazing. Crazy good flavor, slightly sour crumb with a full rye flavor accented by the caraway seeds throughout. Future/Present me would like to congratulate Past Tense me for a job well done. Congratulations.

The Sweet Sounds of Rye: Irma Thomas, Sweet Soul Queen of New Orleans: The Irma Thomas Collection

Step One

Rye Sponge Starter

-1/2 Cup Rye Flour (coarse if possible)
-1 Tbs. Wheat Bran
-1/2 Cup Sourdough Starter (see previous post)
-1/2 Cold Water

Whisk together all ingredients in a bowl until well combined. You are looking for a very wet dough starter. Cover bowl with cling film and let sit in a warmish place to ferment for 4-5 hours. After fermenting, refrigerate bowl overnight.

Step Two


Firm Starter

-1 Cup Unbleached Bread Flour
-1 Quantity Rye Sponge Starter

Remove rye sponge starter from fridge and allow 1 hour to warm up. Combine bread flour and starter and form a relatively firm dough starter. Do not overwork the dough just enough to combine and make firm. Place starter back into the bowl and cover with cling film. Let ferment for 3-4 hour then refrigerate overnight.

Step Three


Dough

-1 Quantity Firm Starter
-4 Cups Unbleached Bread Flour
-1 1/4 Cup Rye Flour
-2 1/2 Tsp. Salt
-1 Tbs. Molasses
-1-2 Tbs. Caraway Seeds
-2 Cups Cold Water

Remove Starter from fridge and allow 1 hour to warm. Break firm starter into pieces and and combine thoroughly with all ingredients. Knead dough on a lightly floured surface for 10 minutes. The dough should be smooth and slightly stretchy. Place the dough in a covered bowl and allow to rise at room temperature for about 3 hours. Divide the dough in to two pieces and form into loaves. Since my brother and sister-in-law were kind enough to bring me two Brotforms (linen-lined wicker baskets) from France, I was able to proof my bread in a fancier way than I normally do. This is what they looked like before proofing.

This is the longer loaf after it was turned out onto a peel and slashed for baking.

Place the formed loaves into floured baskets, cover in a plastic bag and proof at room temperature for 4 hours. Refrigerate overnight.

Day Four


Baking


Remove the loaves from fridge 1 hour before baking. Preheat oven to 475 F and place an empty baking pan on the shelf under your pizza stone. Turn out dough from basket onto a floured baking peel. Slide dough onto pizza stone and pour 1 cup warm water into baking pan. Bake loaf for 5 minutes and then turn down oven to 450 F. and bake a further 25-35 minutes until dark brown and hollow sounding when thwacked. Remove from oven, cover with a towel and let cool on a rack

The crumb on this bread was very special.

Perfect sized air pockets and super delicious.

Day Five Sourdough Starter

Ok so back in time again.....

I have been really busy and unable to get around to writing these entries as they happen. Don`t worry everything has been done sequentially on my end and things are looking good. As I stated in my day four entry, your starter is ready and capable of rising bread now, but it will greatly enhance the final flavor of your bread if you give the starter one more day of refreshing or feeding. You are going to add a large amount of extra flour and water at this point and you may need to transfer your starter to a larger container.

Sourdough Tunes: Black Sabbath, Master of Reality (1971)

Day Five
-4 cups of Unbleached Bread Flour
-3 cups of Cold Water

Add these ingredients to your existing starter and combine thoroughly. Transfer the mix to a larger container (if necessary). Cover container loosely and let ferment for four hours in a cool place. After four hours put the container in the fridge and it will be ready to use anytime you need to make bread. It is generally advised that you feed or refresh the starter every two days.....im not running a bakery so that seems a little over the top. I am going to give the starter a feed every week instead and see how it goes. The starter can also be frozen and stored for up six months. When you thaw out the starter be sure to feed it three times over a period of three days before using it.

Think of sourdough as a good pet....

Day Four Sourdough Starter

This is not sequentially day four anymore (more like six), but the blogger thingy wasn't working so I could'nt post it on the actual fourth day.

Lets go back in time....

Day 4

When I looked at my starter the magical active fermentation had started. There were signs of slight rising of the dough on the sides of the bowl, as well as lots of little bubbles on the surface. It smelled pretty weird, not so much sour as slightly weird sour.....not a smell I am familiar with. So at this point your job is to remove half the starter and add a refreshment batch of flour and water. The half that you remove can be saved and given to a friend to start their own sourdough. If you leave the yeast sitting inside the same starter for too long they will run out of food and get tired and stop producing nice flavors for you. Feeding or refreshing consists of adding to the starter to make double it own volume in fresh flour and water. The flour and water refresher is made up of ratio of 4 parts flour to 3 parts water. This might seem like a pretty wasteful process and one that requires alot of flour, but from this point on you can store the starter in the fridge and not feed it until you remove part of it to make bread.

Sourdough Tunes: Saint Vitus, Born Too Late (1987)

Day Four

-2 cups of Unbleached Bread Flour

-1 1/2 cup of Cold Water

Remove half the starter and discard (or share with a friend). Add flour and water to remaining starter and combine thoroughly. Cover bowl with cling film and let sit in a cool place for 24 hours. 

Day Three Sourdough Starter

When I checked my starter tonight, there was a large slick of dark brownish liquid on the top of the dough. I have no idea if this good or bad. It smelled fine, slightly sourish and wheaty. Im thinking so long as it doesn't turn orange i'll be ok. I was expecting the beginnings of active fermentation but there wasn't much to be seen. Still ill hold out until tomorrow, when I expect the yeasties will start to show themselves through serious gas emission. Im going to do another addition of flour and malt today, my fledgling microbes need food after all. Tomorrow i will start to remove part of the starter and top up with more flour, this process of removal and feeding is what will keep this starter alive for years (if I am diligent). There exist starters that have been kept alive for as long as 50 years (even longer in some cases), essentially a starter will keep on living so long as it has food and doesn't get killed by excessive heat. If you place a starter in the fridge the yeast particles go dormant and will stay like that until you warm them up again.

Sourdough Tunes: Kittens, Bazooka and the Hustler (1997)

Day Three
-2 cups of Unbleached Whole Wheat Flour
-1 tsp. Powdered or Liquid Barley Malt Extact
-1 1/2 cup Cold Water

Add these ingredients in to you previous mix and combine thoroughly. Cover bowl with cling film and let sit in a cool place for 24 hours.

Day 3

Day Two Sourdough Starter

Day 2 of the birth of the sourdough beast. So the watery dough mix that I prepared sat nicely for 24 hours and fermented ( I hope). There were no real signs yet of active fermentation, but there was the beginnings of a little puddle of ethanol goodness on the top of the dough. When yeast eats sugar it produces two things, carbon dioxide and alcohol, so it is normal if you get a wiff of a beery/alcoholish smell when you lift the plastic wrap.....that smell tells you science is at work. Apparently when the European colonists (Germans/Austrians included) came over to the new world, they would skim this alcohol residue of the tops of their fermenting sourdoughs and trade it with the native indians. Sounds believable, but ill file that under "internet science". So anyways your dough should be basically looking like it did the day before, but believe in your little yeasty friends that they are hard at work converting sugars, multiplying and venting gases.

Sourdough Tunes: Sleep, Holy Mountain (1992)

Day Two 

-1 cup of Unbleached Bread Flour

-3/4 cup of Cold Water

-1 tsp. Honey

-1 tsp. Molasses

Add the new ingredients to your previous mix, stir well with a whisk until you form a nice, slightly liquid dough. Cover with cling film and let sit in a cool place for 24 hours. 

Day 2

Tomorrow the action really heats up......fermentation.

Im Back!!!!! Day One Sourdough Starter

Alright, the move is finally complete and my kitchen stuff is out of the box. My new kitchen digs are pretty sweet and far larger and sunnier than my old place. Back to bread making. I squeezed in a quick sausage making session mid-move to provide some sweet meats for a birthday party, but i haven't really had a chance to do any bread. Im feeling like sourdough right now, I had a really good spelt/rye sourdough loaf from an organic farm near Morin-Heights, so im going to make a natural starter or barm starter. In this starter im going to let naturally occurring yeasts all around us find a nice home in my dough sponge and produce a lovely fermenty sourdough flavor.....in 5 days from now. So its going to be a daily caring session for my starter until she's ready to make beautiful bread. Sourdough is used very frequently in German breads as it goes very well with rye and makes for a far more complex flavored crumb......im a big fan. 

Sourdough Tunes: Death, Human (1991)

Day One

-1 cup Stone Ground Whole Wheat Flour

-1 cup Raisin Water (1 cup of  raisins soaked in 2 cups water for 15 minutes, from that strained water take 1 cup)  

-1 tsp. Honey

-1 tbsp. Barley Malt Powder or Liquid (found in beer and wine making stores and some health food or bulk food stores)

Mix ingredients thoroughly in a clean glass bowl (or any other type of bowl except aluminium), cover with cling film and let sit in a cool place for 24 hours.

Day 1