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Multi-Grain Brown Bread

Sunday, April 21, 2013 23:49

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I’ve been on the hunt for brown bread for almost 20 years, ever since a trip to Ireland and a delicious bowl of traditional Irish stew and a slab of rich brown bread. It was nutty, sweet with bitter notes and a sour tang. I’ve not been able to recreate it, until now. I’ve tried traditional brown bread recipes but wasn’t able to come close to that particular brown bread. I’ve tried beer based recipes, some good some not so pleasant to the palette of someone who doesn’t like beer. I stopped trying for a time and tried just about every kind of bread you can make at home, with and without starters. I’ve tried kneading and not kneading. I’ve had successes that could not be duplicated simply because I didn’t write down some key ingredients and had some epic failures.

This is not a traditional brown bread recipe, but it is a high fiber sour dough that tastes, in a word, sublime. It has just enough sweet to balance the sour, is full of protein and is quite filling. Even with my years of bread tinkering, I still consider myself a novice so some lifelong bread bakers might find some of my techniques sacrilege. Yet, this is a recipe I’m proud of and I believe it is one of the best I’ve made to date. It’s a combination of techniques from Sandor Katz and Mother Earth News’ No Knead Bread recipe, with plenty of my own additions. Whenever possible, please use organic ingredients, it will make for a more healthful and pleasant tasting bread.

Before baking you need some basic hardware:

A 4-6 quart cast iron pot or Dutch oven. Enamel is passable but the crust comes from the cast iron.
Thermometer
An 8 cup measuring cup or a 2 quart bowl. I prefer the 8 cup since the measurements are easy to read.
Kitchen thermometer
Clock with a timer, optional but it certainly helps keeping an eye on the time during the kneading, rising, and baking stages. I have one built into the stove and just set the timer and alarm as needed.
Sour dough starter that is at least a week old, but the older the starter the better. My starter this summer will be 2 years old. I worked with one prior to that but had to keep restarting, either it failed because I forgot to feed it or I used the whole thing and didn’t realize saving even ¼ cup of the original to add to the next batch is keeping the original starter alive. I am a firm believer that the key to good bread is a starter that has matured. [look for link to my old starter recipe, Katz’ or something]. When feeding the starter, I use a combination of unbleached flour, whole wheat flour, and rye flour—not at the same time but every so often I alternate flours so the overall starter has a variety of flavor and texture.

Early Starters. The one at left is the grandma
of the one I’m still using today.

Ingredients or software:

For your “sponge” –the yeasty wet mix:

1 tbsp turbinado or brown sugar
1 tbsp dry yeast (not rapid rise)
1 and ½ cups of warm water, 100-110° plus ½ cup of the same reserved separately
1 cup sour dough starter (if you follow the basic recipe that Katz uses, in the link noted, I don’t think it’s necessary to add a few pieces of fruit; inside of 2 days in a warm kitchen the starter was beginning to become active, in 3 days it was positively explosive)
1 tbsp dark molasses
2tbsp honey

For the bread topping:

1 tbsp red alaean salt
2 tsp honey
2 tsp chia seeds
1 tbsp sesame seeds

The dry base:

1 tbsp pink Himalayan salt
½ cup hulled sunflower seeds
1 cup rolled oats, uncooked
3 tbsp kasha or cracked wheat in a medium to coarse grain, uncooked
3 tbsp cocoa powder
3 tbsp flax seed
¼ tsp freshly grated nutmeg
1 tsp dried thyme
2 tsp Herbs de Provence [link to my recipe]
½ cup rye flour
1 cup unbleached, all purpose flour plus 1 cup set aside
2 cups whole wheat flour
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil.

To create the sponge:

Into a small bowl or 2 cup glass measuring cup, measure out 1 and ½ cups of lukewarm water (within the above temperature range, anything hotter will kill the yeast). Stir in the turbinado sugar to dissolve. Sprinkle dry yeast over the top of the mixture and set aside to proof (get yeasty, active and bubbly) for 5-10 minutes. The warmer your kitchen the quicker it will proof. If you have no activity after 10 minutes, check your yeast’s expiration date as it’s most likely deceased yeast. Dump and get fresh, alive yeast.
While your yeast is proofing, into a bowl or your 8 cup measuring vessel, add your dry base: cocoa powder, Herbs de Provence, nutmeg, flax and sunflower seeds, kasha, oats, rye flour, whole wheat flour, 1 cup of the unbleached all purpose flour, and your pink salt. Please do NOT substitute bread flour for any of these flours. Bread flour may make a tougher bread and personally I don’t like using it. Using a wooden spoon carefully and thoroughly stir the dry mixture. You don’t want clumps of cocoa powder or a lump of flax in your bread. Set aside.
Into a large mixing bowl, at least 2-3 quarts in size, you’ll be making your sponge. You want this bowl as large as possible but not too large since you’ll be vigorously mixing and then kneading the mixture in this bowl. To your bowl, pour in your reserved ½ cup of lukewarm water. Then add the molasses and 2 tbsp honey. Stir to combine thoroughly. Add the sour dough starter and fold gently to combine. Once the yeast mixture has proofed, fold that in as well. Allow this sponge to proof for about 5 minutes. You’ll notice it will get bubbly and have a rich, sweet, yeasty smell.

Now it’s time to add your dry mix. I prefer using my hands. If you want to use a bread maker, find another recipe. If you want to use a stand mixer with a dough hook fine, but bread is a very tactile experience. You know when to stop kneading by feel and you can’t do that with a stand mixer. It’s a good workout to make bread by hand and gives honor to what our grandmothers have been doing for literally thousands of years. Personally, bread making is a meditative experience and since I don’t think technology has a place in meditation, it doesn’t in bread making either. But that’s me. If you use a stand mixer you may wind up getting a different product, need more dry, and so on.

Roll up your sleeves and with a trusty wooden spoon (lightly coated with oil to prevent sticking) or a sturdy silicone spatula, start adding your dry mixture ½ to 1 cup at a time. After each addition, fold to combine. Once all the dry is added, sprinkle the oil on top of the dough with ¼ cup of the reserved unbleached all purpose flour and start kneading in the bowl.

This is always the tricky stage in bread making. Yes, you are kneading the dough—but it’s not the traditional kneading out on a board. I developed this because quite frankly I don’t have the space, don’t have a counter conducive to kneading, and I always wind up making a horrible mess. Here, you’re activating the gluten in the dough by kneading—which doesn’t happen at all in a strictly no-knead recipe—but not killing yourself with back breaking kneading (or post knead clean up). While doing this please keep your eye on the time so you don’t over knead and the more you make bread the more you’ll be able to intuit when to stop purely by feel alone.

Every so often add another ¼ cup of flour and, only if absolutely necessary a slight sprinkle of oil. Don’t exceed 1 cup of flour and don’t exceed 3 tbsp of oil total. The objective is to get a dough that has a somewhat silky, smooth texture. It shouldn’t be overly sticky, nor should it be overly dry. You want to be able to touch it, pick it up, without it sticking to your hands obnoxiously. It should also have a bit of a spring to it when you touch it. Again, with practice you’ll know what I’m talking about completely. Initially, follow these instructions and after you finish incorporating the last of the flour take note of the texture of the dough. Your total kneading time should NOT exceed 10 minutes and should be at least 5 minutes.
After 10 minutes, lightly coat a clean bowl (2-4 quart size) with oil. Form the dough into a ball gently and place it in the bowl. Turn the ball once over to fully coat with oil. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap, place in a warm location to rise, and cover with a kitchen towel. Do not disturb the dough. I generally turn my oven on to 200° (especially when it’s cold in the house) and put the dough near the oven. If warm enough it will double in size in as little as 45 minutes to an hour. If you aren’t rushed, after it doubles, lightly punch it down and allow it to rise a second time.
Once the dough has doubled, preheat your oven to 425°. Lightly coat your Dutch oven/cast iron pot with oil. Turn your dough into the pot.
Into a small container combine the red salt, chia seeds and sesame seeds. Sprinkle the mixture ontop of the dough and gently but firmly press the seeds into the top of the bread. Drizzle the reserved honey over the top of the dough, being careful not to get any on the sides which touch the cast iron or you risk burning the bread. I drizzle in the center of the bread and the warmth of the oven will help it spread and absorb into the top of the bread. Lightly cover the pot with a kitchen towel and allow to rise for another 15 to 30 minutes. This final rising will help the seeds stay in place after baking, during a crucial stage—slicing and eating. Some recipes call for using an egg wash, but as it stands this is a vegetarian recipe. I like keeping it like that.
Once the dough has risen this final time, uncover the dough and prepare to bake. If you note that it’s risen so high that the pot cover would hinder more rising, use a deep pot or stainless steel bowl inverted as a makeshift cover. In order to help the center of the dough cook evenly, you must cover the bread for the first 20 minutes of baking. Once covered, pop the Dutch oven in and walk away for 20 minutes. Do NOT open that oven during the first 20 minutes of baking.
After 20 minutes, carefully uncover the bread. There will be steam escaping, try not to burn yourself and try not to allow it all to escape the oven. If it does, with a spray bottle, quickly spritz the oven with water. The steam will help the crust further develop and gives an awesome crackle to your bread.
Once uncovered, close the oven, reduce the heat to 350° and WALK AWAY for another 20 minutes. No matter how tempted you are do NOT peek at your bread or it’ll take longer to bake. If you have a window in your oven, just leave the light on and you can watch it bake til golden.
After 20 minutes, here’s another tricky bit, shut off the oven and leave it in for another 15 minutes. Don’t open the oven during that time. After 15 minutes, carefully remove and turn the bread out onto a board or cooling rack. Here’s the final tricky torturous bit: allow the bread to rest for at least 10 to 15 minutes. When you cut a fresh out of the oven bread like this, it often falls apart. Your patience is well worth it.

I’ve made this bread with different variations, but like this particular one the best. The last batch, which was good, left out the cocoa and molasses and used a mixture of diced dried fruit for the sweetness. It was a wonderful bread that went well with a cup of tea, but wasn’t a hearty bread. I think this brown bread recipe will become a staple in our house, where we don’t really eat much bread. It’s wonderful with a hearty soup, or on its own.

No sooner is it cut then hubby pounces.

2013-04-21 23:46:01

Source: http://www.green-and-growing.com/2013/04/multi-grain-brown-bread.html

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