I spent a couple days trying to pick a recipe for the first weekend of July. I wanted to also bake a July bread for my father-in-law (I haven't stuck to the list of breads I wrote down for each month). I thought of baking two different loaves at the same time, but with the 118º F in Phoenix that Saturday, I wanted to keep my time in the kitchen and by the oven down to a minimum.
I liked the Sprouted Wheat Sandwich Bread recipe in the 'King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking' book, but I didn't have any wheat kernels. I did have pearl barley and thought I would substitute (hence the changed name of the post). The recipe made one loaf for a 9 x 5 pan. I wanted two, possibly 8.5 x 4.5, loaves. So I thought I would multiply the quantities by 1.5 and make one loaf and one free form boule.
The modifications
Sprouting grains has been unpredictable for me in the recent past, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. This was the first time I was trying to sprout barley and have since read that pearl barley doesn't sprout well. Must be true, because after 48 hours of following the rinse and rest process, I only saw tiny might-be-shoot things. I decided to go ahead and use them anyway. I had some cooked brown rice that I thought I would add to the recipe to 'bulk it up' a little in case 1.5 wasn't enough to make two loaves. This is how the formula developed:
| Original recipe | 1.5 times Original Recipe | My adjustments |
| 3¼ oz sprouted wheat berries 8 oz lukewarm water 1½ oz orange juice 2 oz unsalted butter 1½ oz honey 10 oz whole wheat flour 2.75 oz bread flour 1.75 oz rolled oats 1¼ tsp salt 2 tsp instant yeast | 4.825 oz sprouted wheat berries 12 oz lukewarm water 2¼ oz (4.5 tbsp) orange juice 3 oz unsalted butter 2¼ oz honey 15 oz whole wheat flour 4 oz bread flour 2.625 oz rolled oats 1.925 tsp salt 3 tsp instant yeast | 5.5 oz sprouted pearl barley ~12 oz water ~4.5 tbsp orange juice 2 oz unsalted butter ~1.75 oz honey 15 oz whole wheat flour 4 oz bread flour 2.65 oz rolled oats scant 2 tsp salt 8 g instant yeast 3 oz cooked brown rice .3 oz / 8g vital wheat gluten |
I thought the vital wheat gluten would help with the low gluten brown rice and possibly, the barley.
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| 3:15 pm Ingredients |
And things started to fall apart
The recipe calls for grinding the sprouted 'grain', orange juice and water until the mixture is milky white. I forgot the most important lesson from past experiences grinding soaked grains: add water a little at a time. I added half the water, all the orange juice and the sprouts into my mini-processor. As soon as I turned it on, water and orange juice leaked from the back of the utensil and by the time I stopped the machine, I had lost a considerable amount of liquid and some nutrition. I never really got a smooth grind.
I ground the cooked brown rice a bit too, hoping that this way it would blend better in the dough.
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| 3:39 pm: Ground barley sprouts are top right, ground brown rice is bottom right |
Rising
I approximated the liquid to get the dough together, let it rest for a few minutes and then kneaded it a good 10 minutes to help develop the gluten. It didn't pass the window-pane test though.
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| 4:06 pm: Kneaded and ready for first rise |
The dough rose super quickly. The book said two hours, this was done in less than one. I think the enzymes in the barley might be responsible.
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| 4:55 pm: Very quick first rise |
So I decided to deflate and let it rise again, to give the flavors a chance to develop
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| 4:57 pm: Ready for second rise |
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| 5:30 pm: Another quick rise |
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| 5:36 pm: I had about 43 oz of dough. |
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| 6:07 pm: Short proofing |
Baking
I think during all that quick rising, the yeast had used up all the sugars. When I placed the boule in the preheated cast iron deep pan, it just collapsed. It recovered only a little bit during the baking.
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| Somewhat collapsed during baking |
The bread was to be baked at 350º F for 40 minutes. At that time, the boule appeared and tested done. The loaf needed some nudging to come out of the loaf pan and the bottom didn't sound convincingly hollow. So I put the loaf minus the pan back in the turned-off oven for 5 minutes.
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| Falling apart while slicing |
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| Tight crumb at the bottom, loose at the top, sign of super fast rising? |
The bread
The bread tasted okay and we, mostly me, did eat it all. But that is all I can say in praise of this loaf. The slices fell apart, so sandwiches were out of question. The small bits of ground barley sprouts had turned hard, I wonder if this was due to the last 5 minutes in the oven, but they made chewing a little tedious.
Notes
Date: July 3, 2011
Recipe: Adapted from Sprouted Wheat Sandwich Bread from 'King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking: Delicious Recipes Using Nutritious Whole Grains'
FloursGrains: Whole wheat, bread flour,
Bread specific ingredients: Orange juice, sprouted barley, rolled oats, cooked brown rice
Sweetener used: Honey
Liquid: Water, Orange juice
Comments:
1. Does it make sense to try to experiment with formulae when chances of failure are high?
2. Learn about barley.
3. Learn about sprouting.
4. Try again with wheat berries
-RPH
