RPH Buckwheat Bread

I had some ingredients on hand that I wanted to use in a bread, primarily buckwheat flour. (I bought this flour for pancakes, but I am still to develop a liking for buckwheat pancakes.) I scanned my bread books for a recipe but didn't find anything very good. Laurel Robertson's book has one recipe and a note to not use more than ¼ cup buckwheat flour per loaf. Using this as a starting point, I decided to make up my own formula. I baked two loaves, one of which was the (late) November bread for my father-in-law.

Ingredients
For two loaves

550 g whole wheat flour
150 g bread flour
60 g buckwheat flour
100 g rolled oats (ground)
11 g flax seeds (cracked)
8 g instant yeast ( 2 tsp)
14 g salt (2 tsp)

130 g cooked potato

415 g buttermilk (about 1½ cup)
20 g oil (2 tbsp)
22 g molasses (1 tbsp)
60 g orange juice (¼ cup)

Ingredients

Dry ingredients, wet ingredients and potato

Letting the fairly stiff dough rest for 5 minutes so the flours soften

3:37 pm: After 10 minutes of kneading. Rounded and ready to rise

5:28 pm: Long first rise

5:31pm: Ready for second rise

6:14 pm: Quicker second rise

6:26 pm: Total dough weight = 1615 g. Shaped into two loaves

7:04 pm: Proofed, slashed and ready for the oven

New breadboard and slicer
My mother-in-law got me this wonderful cutting board / cooling rack / serving tray. She couldn't wait until Christmas to give it to me, so I got an early present. My cutting board was getting some deep grooves from using a serrated blade and collecting the crumbs was always a pain. This one takes care of both problems. The slatted board can double as a cooling rack. It comes off and the lower portion makes a nice serving tray. It also collects crumbs when used as shown. I am still getting used to the slicer as the angle of the blade is perpendicular to the handle.

Cooling on the new breadboard

Sliced well

Dense moist crumb

The bread
Not bad. The crumb was quite dense and initially very moist (maybe even a tad gummy). The flavor was fairly bold, similar to rye bread.

Notes
Date: November 17, 2011
Recipe: My own recipe (see above), with notes from Laurel Robertson's book.

Flours: Whole wheat, bread flour, rolled oats, buckwheat flour
Bread specific ingredients: Flax seeds, potato
Sweetener used: Molasses
Liquid: Buttermilk

Comments:
I should try buckwheat flour in Peter Reinhart's multigrain struan bread.
This dough was very stiff. I wonder if adding more liquid would help make a lighter crumb.
This one was not bad for winging it, but it wasn't exceptional either.


-RPH