Tanya's Peasant Black Bread

Something New

This week, I've decided to try a new recipe.  This is Tanya's Peasant Black Bread from the book.  I am modifying it as I did for the caraway rye recipe to simplify the sourdough refresh.  Another thing that I tried this morning was making a pancake from the starter that I would have ordinarily discarded.  My usual procedure is to remove the amount of starter that I need for my recipe and then discard all but 4 oz. of the starter before feeding and storing it for future use.  Today, I cooked the discards.

OK, the pancake wasn't good, but I just took the discarded starter and poured it into a frying pan.  I do have a recipe for sourdough flapjacks.  I'll try that next week.

Tanya's Peasant Black Bread
Remove 4 oz. of starter from the fridge.  Add 6 oz. of white flour and 6 oz. of water.  Set in a warm place for about 6 hours until it doubles in size.  Then, add
Dark Molasses	1 Tbl + 1 tsp
Milk	1/3 Cup
Sugar	1½  tsp
Ground Coriander	1 tsp
Salt	1 tsp
Vital gluten	1 Tbl
Rye flour	1 Cup
White bread flour	1½ Cup
Whole wheat flour	1 Cup
Water or Milk as needed

This recipe suggests using a long final rise time.  I consulted the manual for my machine and chose the whole wheat cycle. 

I found that I needed to add 4 tablespoons of milk before I had a cohesive dough ball and added a 5th tablespoon for good measure.  That comes to a bit more that 5 oz., or about 2/3 cup.

Here is the dough ball before adding any milk.  Note that this is an action shot while the dough was mixing.  Notice all of the flour that is stuck in the corners of the pan.

...and here it is after adding 5 tablespoons more milk.

Looking at the finished product, I'd say "black bread" is a bit of a misnomer.  Given that the only ingredient that is black is the little bit of molasses, I'm not surprised.  This result has that same characteristic cleft that my rye loaf had.  It was looking OK when I peeked in on it during the last rise cycle.  I suspect the dough was a little too stiff, and it ruptured during the baking cycle.  Perhaps a little more milk will help with that.  This loaf did fill the pan, though.  My rye loaves didn't.

And how does it taste?  Well, pretty much like you would expect--kind of a hybrid of whole wheat and rye.  The rye flavor is a bit understated.  It is a surprisingly light bread given how much flour went into it and how full the bread pan was before I started the machine.  This will be a pretty good sandwich bread.  It's similar in taste to my standard whole-wheat recipe, but a touch sweeter.

Next: Flapjacks and waffles followed by Swedish Lipa Bread.

Vacation recovery and second rye loaf

A Well Rested Starter

I had a good deal of bread to eat, and I went on vacation, so my starter hadn't been used in over two weeks.  I wanted to try the rye bread recipe, again, with the modifications that I suggested, earlier.

Caraway Rye Bread
Remove 4 oz. of starter from the fridge.  Add 6 oz. of white flour and 6 oz. of water.  Set in a warm place for about 6 hours until it doubles in size.  Then, add
Water	½ Cup
Salt	1 tsp
Caraway seeds	1 Tbl
Vital gluten	2 tsp
Rye flour	1 Cup
White bread flour	2 Cup
Water as needed

I was somewhat concerned that my starter might not be active enough, coming straight out of the fridge and not having been fed in over two weeks.  It turns out that it easily came back to life.  I decided to complete the first step straight in my bread machine pan.

I measured the starter by weight and added the additional water and flour.  I turned on the bread machine on the white bread cycle (it shouldn't matter which cycle) for a few minutes to mix the ingredients.  I also discarded all but 4 oz. of the remaining starter and fed that with 4 oz. of water and 4 oz. of flour.  I set them both in my warm spot and waited for 6 hours.

Voila! The starter had doubled in volume and the culture for the new loaf was active.

I added the remaining ingredients, but did not add any water "as needed."  I wanted to wait to see how the dough ball looked after it had been kneaded for a while.  I used the French bread cycle, because it had longer rise times in the program.  There isn't a big difference from the times in the whole wheat cycle.  I suspect that either would work as well.

The resulting dough ball looked good, so I didn't add any additional water.  In retrospect, I think a stickier dough might rise better, so I think I'll add a bit of water next time.

As before, I got a weird-looking loaf, but it is still tasty.  I'm hoping that a less stiff dough might take the shape of the pan better.

I could try to perfect this, but I think I am going to move onto a different recipe next week.

Disaster Recovery

Oops!

I had prepared my 16 oz. of starter and was ready to prepare the first step of the rye bread recipe.

I was supposed to add 1 cup of white bread flour, before kneading and setting it aside for 8 hours.  My brain took a short break, and I added 1 cup of water.  Now, that was going to be a little difficult to undo, but at least I hadn't mixed anything before my brain came back from break.  I put the gooey mess into a colander to strain off most of the water, returned the strained goo to the bread pan and added a cup of flour.  After mixing, it looked too liquidy.

I added about 1/4 cup more flour, set it to mix again, and hoped for the best.  I set that out overnight to wake to this:

Not bad, really.  Now I'll just adjust the flour and water amounts from the recipe and see how it goes.  In addition to the other ingredients, I'm supposed to add 1 cup of white flour and 1/2 cup of water.  I'm going to start with 1/2 cup of flour and no water.  After a few minutes in the bread machine, my dough ball looks a little too dry.

I added 2 Tbl. of water and scraped the chunks off the corner.  Starting the cycle again, I have a reasonable looking dough ball.

It might be a little too sticky, but I'm going with it.

The Result

Well, it came out a little rugged looking,

 but it tastes delicious!

Next time I try this, I think I am going to substitute my normal starter preparation step for the first part of the recipe.  In my last post I mentioned that the book says that I can just take the starter right out of the fridge and begin the recipe.  My next attempt I'm going to try this:

Caraway Rye Bread
Remove 4 oz. of starter from the fridge.  Add 6 oz. of white flour and 6 oz. of water.  Set in a warm place for about 6 hours until it doubles in size.  Then, add
Water	½ Cup
Salt	1 tsp
Caraway seeds	1 Tbl
Vital gluten	2 tsp
Rye flour	1 Cup
White bread flour	2 Cup
Water as needed

Next: The second rye loaf after a vacation

Rye bread

My Goal

Sourdough rye bread was my primary reason for starting this project.  I working from this recipe in Worldwide Sourdoughs from Your Bread Machine.

Caraway Rye Bread
Starter	2 Cups
White bread flour	1 Cup
Knead for 5 minutes and let sit for 8 hours. Then add…
Water	½ Cup
Salt	1 tsp
Caraway seeds	1 Tbl
Vital gluten	2 tsp
Rye flour	1 Cup
White bread flour	1 Cup
Water as needed

OK, there are a few issues to tackle.

1. Two cups of sourdough starter is going to use all I have.  I need some to save for my next loaf.
2. That last bit of "as needed" means that I can't use the delay timer to start the cycle, at least not the first time.  I'll need to monitor the first mixing cycle to make sure the water is right.

Here's the plan:
Issue #1.  The instructions for using my refrigerated starter say to discard all but 4 oz. and feed it with flour and water.  Then, use the fed starter to make my recipe and feed the remainder for storage in the fridge.  It suggests that I might need several feedings.  Let's be optimistic and say I don't.  So, I'm going to try to kill two birds with one stone.  My refrigerated starter weighs about 16 oz.  Rather than discard 12 oz., I am going to feed two containers.  One will be to store back in the fridge.  The other will be the full 2 Cups that I need for my recipe.

For the recipe: Remove 4 oz. of starter, add 6 oz. of white bread flour and 6 oz. of water.
For the fridge: Discard all by 4 oz. of what is left.  Add 4 oz. of four and 4 oz. of water.
Set these both in my warm cellar location for 6-8 hours.  Put the starter back in the fridge and use all of the recipe container in the recipe.  I'm tempted to grow the recipe mixture in the bread pan, but dried sourdough starter is very similar to dried glue, so not this time.

Here are my two containers.  The one with the green arrow is for the recipe.  I'm a bit worried that it will overgrow its container, so I put a plate under it.

Issue #2. Combine the first two ingredients before going to bed, and put the bread pan in my warm cellar location while I sleep.  Add the remaining ingredients in the morning and start the cycle.  The recipe suggests the French or whole wheat cycle.  I haven't decided which, yet.

The book says that I can just take starter straight out of the fridge and put it in my recipe.  The first step of the recipe prior to waiting 8 hours takes care of the warming and refresh.  I might give that a try in the future, but there is still the issue of needing 2 cups of starter.  Maybe I'll try that with a smaller loaf.

In a future blog post, I'll talk about the bread machine that I am using.  I'll see if I can find any details about the timing of the various cycles.

Next post: Recovering from disaster

The first loaf using only starter yeast.

The First Loaf without Cheating

OK, that loaf of World Bread was not a 100% success.  The dough ball from the first step was pretty stiff, so I'm not surprised that the bread came out too dense.

You can see from this bottom view that the dough held it's shape too much, instead of conforming to the pan.  The first step needs more water or less flour to make a dough ball that isn't so stiff.  I'm thinking that less flour is a better choice.

This loaf wasn't a complete failure, though.  It tastes good.  It's just a little too dense. 
For now, I've got a lot of bread to eat.  I hope to try a rye bread recipe this coming weekend.

Next: Rye bread