050 - Rye and White

Spelt Rye Bread

December 18, 2011

This loaf is not numbered yet because there have been a few loaves since my last post, which I failed to add to the blog. After looking through my notes I'll update accordingly.
Despite the absence of my sourdough starter, I'm making a long-needed return to baking. Not having my starter and not having a permanent place to live have both been convenient but foolish excuses not to bake. I've just mixed my first dough in months and it's autolysing at the moment. Feels good to get my hands covered in flour again. But enough of the sentimentality.

I'm using a mixture of Dove's Rye Flour, Dove's Spelt Flour, and Waitrose's Organic Strong White Canadian Flour. Using warm water as always. And Hovis Instant Yeast.

[250 RY - 150W - 100SP - 10Y - 350WA] autolyse 50 min (0110-0200)
[50WA - 10SA - 5CS] bulk ferment 2 hours, stretch/fold every 30 (0200-0400)

On first mixing I found the dough to be quite pasty and sticky, with a grey/greenish color presumably resulting from the rye and spelt mixture. The dough expanded a bit after the longish autolyse, was quite dry to the touch. Used Maldon Sea Salt, as usual, and added a touch of Caraway seeds and 50 grams of hot water. Gave it another thorough mixing to get the salt and seeds distributed evenly, and left to ferment. Over two hours, the dough became very airy but the gluten did not seem to develop very well. Instead of being stretchy and smooth, the dough was pocketed with air, never forming a smooth surface. Only at the end of the two hours was the dough able to hold together enough to really stretch. Initially I had to flatten and fold the dough over manually.

Retarded the dough in a rather cold fridge for 13 hours (0400-1700) and placed into a floured, heated, and covered dutch oven after flouring both the dough and the oven, shaping it into a small round. The dough was lightly sprayed with water before covering and baking as well. A for the dough after retarding, it looked a bit dense, with small pocks of air covering the entire surface of the dough (breaking the surface, not underneath) and a small amount of water pooled at the edges, which I reincorporated into the dough while shaping it before baking. It wasn't particularly gummy or sticky, but it didn't look particularly silky either. The dough had not expanded anymore than it had during bulk fermentation. I suspect the fridge was too cold, but it doesn't get much warmer than it is.

When I checked the status of the dough after 25 minutes of baking, it still looked pale and without a substantive crust, so I left it for another 15 minutes. By then, the crust had formed a bit better but wasn't especially uniform. Maybe about 30% oven spring. The color was more grey than anything else at this point. And it smelled slightly sour for whatever reason. This oven may not be as hot as others I've worked with, as the crust failed to darken even after extended baking. The loaf did start to smell sweet towards the end of baking. Total baking time was 2 full hours, and I'm letting it sit to cool overnight.

I wasn't very impressed with either the look or the taste of the bread. The crust was tough without being very crunchy or crisp, and it lacked that familiar double-crust with a dark, crunchy, easily-shattered crust on top and a lighter colored soft and chew crust just separated from the dark crust by an airy layer. The crumb was not gummy nor was it light, but it didn't have the sort of bubble structure that I expected it to. The taste of the crumb was slightly on the salty side, so in my next loaf I'll likely use 7 grams of salt instead. I suspect that all of the above and the loaf's lack of oven spring were due to a combination of a slightly less hot oven, over-fermentation, and a failure to shape the dough properly before baking. I had been so used to shaping pre-retardation and/or dealing with high hydration doughs that couldn't be shaped successfully that I slipped up here and forgot an essential step. Next round: less salt, no retarding, two rounds of shaping, and less baking time. I'll also go with a more typical white/wholemeal mix that's slightly more forgiving. Slightly disappointed by this result, but fun to bake nonetheless.