044 - Spelt, Rye, White


Spelt White Rye Loaf
July 6. 2011

[200SP - 150RY - 150W - 235LE - 350WA] autolyse 30 minutes (1930-2000)
[10SA - 50WA] mix, bulk ferment on counter - fold every half hour (2000-2300)
shape into a round, bench rest x2 (2300, 2315) 
shape into a stubby cylinder and retard in loaf tin (2330-0600)

The dough started out quite loose and gloopy (first folding) and developed a very stretchy, only slightly sticky texture in three hours time in moderate room temperature. At this point there were only one or two very large and translucent bubbles on the surface of the dough and the dough itself was not very webby (can you call dough latticed?). After shaping the dough into a rough round it started to droop immediately so I reshaped it after 15 minutes and again it drooped almost immediately. My guess is that the dough is too gassy and wet to hold itself together very well, but that's a bit optimistic. After 30 minutes and two shapings, I roughly folded and shaped the dough and placed it into a floured loaf tin to retard in the fridge. Despite the lack of tension in the dough I managed to get a better shaping than usual (it looked like an actual shaped loaf at least long enough for me to place it in the loaf tin) by folding it by thirds lengthwise, rolling the short ends together, then rolling the finished product again and tucking in the undersides, gently rolling the entire thing. It really helped to have a bench scraper and use flour liberally.

After for 6.5 hours I rolled the dough onto a floured baking sheet, tucked in the bottom, and slashed it length-wise. After that I sprayed with water and baked in a steamed oven for 1:20. For some reason whenever I slash length-wise the the dough just rises to fill the slash instead of opening up - I have a feeling this is probably a good indicator of something (probably a negative indicator) that I need to look up. First, as the dough heated up it slouched a bit and started to spread out, then there was some slight oven spring that didn't quite make up for how much the dough had pancaked. Before baking it was a uniform cylinder. As you can see from the second photo, not only did the slash get filled, but the crust broke in the filled slash.

I managed to wait 4 hours before cutting into this loaf, but someone else beat me to it. The crust was not too thick but very crunchy and the crumb was quite tight, soft, and moist. I had been hoping that the mix of spelt, white, and rye would produce a rye-flavored bread with the texture of my spelt white, but this was entirely not the case. The bread was relatively dense considering the amount of white flour that went into it (if you count the spelt) and the texture was similar to my country loaf. I couldn't really taste the rye very much. I am not sure how to tell whether the dough needed a longer bulk fermentation, or longer retarding, etc. I may start repeating the same dough with wildly different times.

Submitted to Yeastspotting

2 comments:

  1. i had the same issues with slack dough when i made a spelt loaf last week. yes, back to the books!

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  2. You might find your bread geting better shape through cold fermentation. Mix all except salt, let autolys 3x1h with folding in between and adding salt on the last fold with just the water from your hands being the addition at every fold. Let proof for 2hrs last time and then put the dough inside a drap with quite alot of flour on it. Let it be in the refrigerator 12-15hrs. Take out the dough and divide and shape it into the loaf that you want and the let it proof for another 2 hours in room temperature. Once again to the refrigerator and flour on top to protect the dough instead of plastic. Let it proof in refrigerator until the time for baking. Aprox 12-15hrs more.

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