Peasant Bread

My ultimate goal with sourdough was always to bake a reasonable facsimile of medieval peasant bread: a recipe that was 100% rye, not too fine, made only with rye, water, salt and a non commercial leavening agent such as sourdough or brewer's yeast.
I went back to one of my British recipes that had given me fits a few weeks ago,
and tried it with my nice starter that had provably worked in the Czech country loaf I posted about earlier.
(By the way, I think I know why my earlier starters were flops.
I think the flour was too old.
Rye flour is not exactly selling fast off the shelves, even in health food stores, and I didn't have any success until I started grinding my own flour from whole rye berries, using my handy Lee Mill, which also does excellent wheat flour too.)

So, I mixed up my starter refresher:

This is the dough after 12 hours

(recipe said let it sit 12-24 hours).
Look how nicely it doubled:

Then I mixed up the dough proper,
with more water, and flour and salt:

Then I let THAT rise (see following post.)

Peasant Bread Too

The dough is very wet, and it is easiest to put it into the pan using a rubber scraper:

But it rose!

Unlike wheat bread, though, baking did not cause it to rise further:

Slicing into the bread (after resting 24 hours as recommended) revealed a slightly gooey crumb. I think that this is just a characteristic of rye, but I may try baking it slightly longer next time.
It has a decent flavor (especially if you like sourdough.)

Of course, I could increase medieval authenticity by using coarser flour
(and adding grit and maybe ergotism poisoning too but I'll skip those, thanks).
It will do very well for student demonstrations as it is,
which is what I'm after.

Sourdough Success!

Today I finally made a successful sourdough recipe!
It was a wheat/rye bread from a book called _Local Breads_
which had been recommended to me.
I finally got my starter to a point that looked viable,
and then refreshed it:

And stirred it down, ready to add it to the dough:

Here's the dough:
whole wheat flour (though the recipe said white),
rye flour,
salt,
yeast,
water.
It's quite stiff:

Now for the sourdough addition:

After the preliminary mixing with the spatula,
I left the rest to my KitchenAid
(see below).

Sourdough Success Continued

Initial dough mixing:

Then, after resting it and kneading again with the dough hook,
nice, smooth elastic dough
(how I love my KitchenAid!)

Putting the dough aside to rise:

And it DID rise!
Hooray!

Sourdough Success Concluded

Here are the final steps.
The dough shaped into small rounds, as the recipe states:

The risen round, dusted with flour,
is 'docked' by poking with a skewer,
before being baked in the oven on parchment paper placed over a baking stone:

Baked loaves:

Loaf interior:

The crust is exceptionally good, thanks to the high oven heat and the steaming technique described in the book.
I really liked this bread.
It has a very lovely flavor.
Not as sour as San Francisco sourdough, for instance,
it reminded me of a bread version of Rye Krisp crackers that I used to eat when I was a child.

Rye Victory Finished

Bread out of the oven!
Bottom crust looks great,
and tapping it produces a hollow sound:

Top crust doesn't look quite so great
(next time I will preheat the lid along with the rest of the pot
and also sprinkle some oats on top,
and forget the slashing idea):

We cut into it before the 1 hour post-oven rest time was up,
because we wanted it for lunch,
so the crumb was a bit gluey.
However, it was fairly tasty.
A bit salty, though.

The whole point of all this experimenting is to come up with a bread that is a reasonably close tasting approximation of medieval peasant bread.
Hence rye not wheat, and if wheat, whole wheat not white.
Also hence the sourdough,
as commercial 'sweet' yeast was not really a possibility.
(If I were really gung-ho I would try to acquire some brewer's yeast
but sourdough should be a reasonable acceptable alternative).

This is a good-tasting workable recipe, but it is much nicer bread than what medieval peasants got.
For one thing, the flour is way too fine.
I am going to try the recipe again with half cracked-rye
(using my Mom's hand mill that she uses to make cracked wheat)
substituted for half of the flour.
Then once I get some feel for how rye breads work,
I will branch out back into sourdough attempts.

I have to say that I would probably get on better if I weighed my ingredients
instead of measuring them by cups and so on.
However, I don't feel comfortable with that kind of baking.
And I haven't found a good kitchen scale yet.

Rye Victory Continued

Here's my work surface.
I sprayed it with Pam,
and kept a bowl of water handy.
The water was for dipping my hands.
Rye dough is very sticky,
and it doesn't develop gluten like yeast does.
So it doesn't need much kneading.
But I did a little, as per the recipe instructions:

Here is the kneaded dough, plonked in its oiled bowl,
ready for its second and final rise.
You can see that it is dense, heavy,
and a bit wet on the surface
(wet hands keep the dough from sticking to them):

Here is the dough after rising for about an hour:

Then after preheating a small 8" dutch oven,
here is the dough,
brushed with cornstarch & water
(and I tried to slash it decoratively, not very well):

Ready to go in the oven!

A Furst(enberg) Rye Victory

Having no luck with my sourdough rye attempts,
I decided to look around on the web and find a recipe for 100% rye that looked more manageable.
This one is nearly 100% rye:

http://projects.washingtonpost.com/recipes/2008/04/30/mark-furstenbergs-rye-bread/

I followed the recipe pretty closely.
Here is the overnight yeast sponge,
with onion.
(I still don't know why the onion is necessary.
Flavor?
Or increasing acidity?)

The next morning, as per instructions,
I added rye flour, a little wheat flour, and water.
(Okay, so I used whole wheat instead of white bread flour,
that was a change.)
Oh yes, I took out the onion, too.

After mixing it up in the Kitchen Aid,
and then adding salt (too much salt, I'd halve what the recipe calls for)
and yeast
and NO caraway (I do not like caraway),
it looked like this:

This gluey concrete-like mixture was transferred to an oiled bowl
(though frankly I think it could have stayed in the Kitchen Aid bowl)
to rise for an hour.
Here's how it looks after this first rise:

On to my next steps.

Sourdough Frustration

I do not know what the problem is,
but something is Definitely Wrong with my sourdough rye attempts.
The starter looks active,
but when I mix it up with flour, water, and salt as per the recipe,
this is what results:

If this were a just-in-the-pan view, okay.
BUT...
It won't rise.
I let it stay in a warm but not too warm spot,
for 30 hours (JUST IN CASE)
but it didn't rise.
Instead, it developed funny little white spots:

That is not the greatest closeup but the point is clear.

I have done this twice, and the dough wouldn't rise.
AARGH.
Is the problem the starter?
The recipe?
The flour quality?

There's no point in baking this.
It would be a brick and I would break my teeth
(if I didn't die of ergotism poisoning,
or whatever that white stuff is).

I think I'm going to look online for some commercial sourdough starter.
Or maybe try my current starter on a wheat recipe.
There's got to be some way around this dead end!!

Sourdough part 3: baking preparations

After letting my sourdough starter sit for another 15 hours or so,
here is what it looks like:

Mixing it reveals streaks of differing colors
(subtle but still visible in the photo):

I nerved up to taste it,
and it doesn't taste as bad as I thought
(or as bad as it smells,
because frankly I don't think it smells that great),
but it tastes, well, like mild sourdough taste.

According to my sources, I *think* it is now mature enough to begin
to prepare for baking some bread.
I want to try a 100% rye bread recipe.
I've never baked all-rye before and it isn't like wheat.
(That I've learned partly from reading and partly from experience.)
Substituting rye for wheat, straight, equals a brick-
dense, tough, untasty.
So I need specifically rye-based recipes.
I've got one I want to try,
more or less based on Andrew Whitley's British book "Bread Matters."
I *hope* I've got the conversions right this time.


First I'm going to mix up what the recipe book calls a 'production starter',
a starter specifically for the bread recipe.
(The rest goes in the fridge, where I will pull it out and feed it to maintain it,
from time to time.)
I've mixed 1/4 cup of starter with 1 cup plus 2 Tablespoons rye flour,
and 1 cup water, slightly warmed.
It looks very sloppy,
not like regular bread dough:

This measures 2 cups almost exactly.
Now I've put it back in its warm spot to double,
which should take somewhere from 12-24 hours.
I will just have to keep watching it.
(The timing is not optimal because I do have to teach tomorrow
and I can't be home all day to pop in as often as I'd like).
Also, I am using a glass container,
for four reasons.
1) A number of my sources have recommended glass
2) It has a plastic lid so if the pressure builds up and the lid pops off,
there won't be any glass exploding.
3) It was bigger than my plastic containers,
4) it had levels already marked off on the container.
So it should be easy to tell when 2 cups has risen to 4 cups.

Because the container is glass (and heavy)
I could not put it directly on the screen atop Mortimer's cage.
So I rigged up a cooling sheet as a support,
my nice Pampered Chef one with legs,
that would put the weight on the cage frame, which is much sturdier.
Let's hope all goes well with this stage...

Sourdough phase 2

Ok, so after letting my starter sit for about 38 hours on top of Mortimer's cage,
here is what I have:

Nice bubbles, clearly active.
Sour, slightly wierd smell.
It's like nothing I'm really used to.
Recipes say if I taste it it should be 'mildly tangy' but to be honest,
I can't bring myself to taste it.
It does not smell musty or bitter, though, which I've read are the things to be wary of.
Now I'm going to add some more flour and water.
This time I'm using 1/4 cup flour and 1/4 cup water,
equal parts.

Stirring it in, I see how it foams up, is kind of soupy
(a good sign, according to my reading)
and even 'stretchy' like early proto-dough.

All of these are good signs, so it's back to the top of Mortimer's cage,
and in another 12 hours or so I will check it again.
It's nice when the project goes well according to just about all descriptions.
There are a lot of directions out there, and how's a novice to decide,
say between plastic and glass containers,
when one source warns that glass can explode with the pressure buildup,
and another says that glass is better for the culture?
So far it seems to be working well, though.

Sourdough and Snakes

I have been experimenting with trying to raise a rye sourdough starter for bread.
My first attempt went very awry, after what looked to be an initial success,
because I was using a British recipe and I badly misjudged the amount of water that needed to be put in.
So it didn't work.
After a bit of web research and recalculation, I am trying again,
chronicling the stages as I go.
Very first stage,
1/4 cup organic rye flour,
and 1/2 cup water at 104 degrees F (40 C).

Mix.

Some of the sources I consulted said it should look like pancake batter,
which is just about right.
The current bubbles are from stirring only,
but it should bubble as it ferments later on.
Now I just need to put it in a container and a warm place.

As for a warm place, I have the Perfect Spot.
The sources I have consulted all say that about 80 F (30 C) is perfect.
Not any hotter,
but not any cooler than 75.
Well, my house is currently about 75 so I could try the counter,
but when I took the temperature of the top of Mortimer's cage,
with the ambient heat lamp next door,
it was just under 80 F.
So the sourdough culture will share space with my snake for a bit.

May it flourish!
I will post on additional successes (or failures).