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

Potato Rye Bread

I must have missed this bread in Laurel Robertson's 'The Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book' because it's in the Sprouts section and not in the Rye Breads section. It uses yogurt and fennel seeds along with wheat flour and of course, potatoes and rye. However I had buttermilk I wanted to use, RH doesn't like fennel and I didn't have quite enough rye. So the final recipe is somewhat different from the original.

Recipe

110 g cooked potato
114 g buttermilk
150 g rye flour
340 g whole wheat flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp instant yeast
1 tsp caraway seeds
1 Tbsp oil
2/3 cup water

Ingredients

I blended the potatoes with a hand blender so they would mix uniformly in the dough. Not a good idea, because the blender makes the potatoes very gummy. Hand mashing would be best.
The mashed potatoes, buttermilk, yogurt and 1/3 cup water are mixed together. In a large bowl the remaining dry ingredients are whisked together.
When first mixed in, the dough should be very stiff. As the dough is kneaded the moisture from the potatoes gets incorporated. The remaining 1/3 cup water is slowly added in over the 10 minute kneading.

11:17 am: Ready for the first rise

1:12 pm: First rise is done nearly two hours later

1:14 pm: Ready for second rise

1:51 pm: Quicker second rise

2:04 pm: After rounding, resting and shaping

2:22 pm: Super fast proofing

2:23 pm : Into the pre-heated cast-iron pan

3:26 pm: Is that oven spring?

This was the first time I used a vertical slash on a round loaf. Whoa!

Slicing very wide loaves is not easy

Decent crumb

The bread
We shared some of the bread with the in-laws. We liked the taste, mildly rye and caraway seed - like.

Notes
Date: Sept 24, 2011
Recipe: Adapted from Potato Rye Bread from Laurel Robertson's book, 'The Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book'

Flours: Whole wheat, rye
Bread specific ingredients: Potato
Sweetener used: None
Liquid: Buttermilk, water

Comments: I need to blog promptly so I can write useful notes about the baking experience. I think I said that a few blog posts ago too. Sigh.

-RPH

Stromboli

My first attempt at a stromboli based on articles read online and adapted to a whole wheat dough was not much of a success. I've been wanting to make a good, presentable version since then. I decided to try the recipe from King Arthur Flour's 'Whole Grain Baking' book even though the dough is not 100% whole grain.

Ingredients
I was willing to follow the recipe, this being the first time. However it called for potato flakes or potato flour and I couldn't find either at the local natural foods store. I decided to used a boiled potato. I decided to make only one loaf, which meant halving the recipe. This time I took the effort to write down the quantities for half the recipe instead of trusting myself to remember to do the conversion on the fly.

Leave me a comment if you want the recipe.

I read online that a boiled potato is 75% water and 25% potato starch. So in order to have .675 oz of potato flour/flakes, I used 2.5 oz of boiled potato. The 1.75 oz of water from the potato was added towards the liquid requirement. I added 2.7 oz of water from boiling the potato to make the 4.5 oz of water needed. I believe using the potato water really helped make the dough soft. I think this replacement worked well for the potato flour/flakes. Just took a bit of math.

Ingredients. I used dry milk for the first time.
Orange juice is the other favorite ingredient in many KAF recipes

This recipe used whole wheat pastry flour and bread flour. Other ingredients for the dough were salt, honey, potato water, orange juice, dry milk, butter, yeast and boiled potato

Tiny amount of dough (half the recipe). Very soft.

Nicely risen after two hours

Rolled out into a 10 x 12 inch rectangle

The filling
The filling (half recipe) contained
1.5 T oil
1 clove garlic, minced,
1.5 oz sliced onion (not in original recipe)
5 oz mushroom
5 oz fresh spinach
¼ t salt
½ t pepper
2.5 oz crumbled feta cheese (I used 0.55 oz parmesan and 1.75 oz pepper jack)
1.25 oz pitted sliced kalamata olives (I skipped these)

I was glad I started preparing the filling right after the dough started its first rise because it does take time to put together, cook and then cool. I placed the cheese on the warm filling mix but didn't stir it in. Later I saw that it had melted into clumps, not a big problem, but next time I would mix the cheese in well instead of letting it melt itself. From past experiences making pizza, I knew I needed to strain the liquid in the mixture well before putting it on the dough. I am surprised the book doesn't specify that.

Filling spread on

Long edges folded in to prevent leakage

Rolled left to right

Proofing and baking
It was unusual that the roll was to be slashed before proofing. The slashes allow steam to escape. After 30 minutes of proofing, the stromboli is baked in a 375° F oven for 35 - 40 minutes.

Slashed before proofing

Proofed and ready for the oven

Some of the cheese bubbled and some tried to get away

Flattened out in the middle like the book said it might

6 slices per loaf

Held together well.

Stromboli
The crust was extremely soft and had good give (Oh yes, the dough had help from plenty of butter). The 'slices' were great warmed and even better dipped in home made pasta sauce. RH agreed they tasted good but found them heavy, too much bread and not enough vegetables per slice. I have to agree, but too much bread never bothers me.

Notes
Date: June 5, 2011
Recipe: King Arthur Flour's book 'Whole Grain Baking'

Flours: Whole wheat pastry flour, bread flour
Bread specific ingredients: See Ingredients and The filling section above
Sweetener used: Honey
Liquid: (Potato) Water

First rise time: 120 mins
Proofing time: 35 mins
Comments: Potato substitution worked well. Potato flour likely helped the dough. It would be interesting to keep the same potato usage and try to replace some of the bread flour with more whole wheat pastry flour. And maybe some of the butter with oil or reduce the amount of butter? Rolling out the dough to the given size and rolling the filling were quite straightforward. This was fairly simple to make and I hope to make it again, maybe even two loaves, for company.

-RPH

Potato Rosemary Bread

I was looking for a change from Laurel Robertson's recipes and it came to me when I picked up some fresh rosemary from my in-laws' garden: Reinhart's Potato Rosemary bread. I had made this recipe in the past for a family dinner and it was liked by all.

Starter and biga
Like a typical Reinhart whole-grain recipe, this one also has a biga and starter made a day (or upto 3 days) before baking day. The liquid from boiling the potatoes is used to soak the whole wheat flour for the biga and the starter.

Ingredients for starter and biga

Final dough
On baking day mashed potatoes (boiled the previous day) and fresh rosemary are added to the starter and biga along with more yeast and salt and some olive oil. Optional ingredients are roasted garlic and black pepper and I do plan to make this recipe with garlic at some point.

The usual ingredients + mashed potato and chopped fresh rosemary.

The recipe makes two boules or about 20 dinner rolls. I thought I would try to make one half into a loaf for sandwiches, but the dough was soft enough that it wouldn't have been easy to shape it into a loaf. I believe the potatoes were a tad over boiled and had a higher water content. I should have added more flour but I didn't.

A very soft dough

Ready for the first rise

Well risen after the first (and only) rise

Shaping and proofing
I decided to make a boule with half the dough and shape the rest into dinner rolls. I placed the dinner rolls close enough that they would proof into each other. I kept two of them apart to see if there would be a difference between the ones that stuck to each other and the ones that didn't.

Some dinner rolls and a boule

Proofed with some serious gas bubbles in the boule.

Scored dough. The rolls got four snips each with the tips of the kitchen scissors.

The bread

Out of the oven

Tight moist crumb

The boule sliced well.

Thin crust with some air pockets. Crumb with visible bits of potato.

I used a pan with hot water to generate steam. The rolls were done a little before the boule as expected. They were done in about 35 minutes and the boule took about 50 mins. The two rolls that were not attached to the others didn't get any more oven spring than the ones that were attached. We had some warm rolls with Laughing Cow cheese spread and soup. The combination tasted good. The boule has been frozen for a later time.

Notes
Date: Mar 27, 2011
Recipe: Potato Rosemary Bread from Peter Reinhart's book 'Whole Grain Breads'

Flours: Whole wheat
Bread specific ingredients: Potato, fresh rosemary
Sweetener used: None
Liquid for soaker: Potato water

First rise time: 75 minutes
Proofing time: 45 minutes
Comments: There was too much water in the boiled potatoes, I should have added more flour to make up for it. I should also try the recipe with roasted garlic.

-RPH