Bread making for me has two distinct stages. The first is the making of the dough, and I have a recipe for that which I rarely waver from. I will happily add and subtract from it, but I will usually use it as a base to start from. It was based on the Richard Bertinet olive bread recipe, and I converted it to use my sourdough starters. I have two starters (both from Teresa), named Tully (SF starter) and Priscilla (NW starter). This batch of dough was Tully's.
The second part of the process is playing with the dough once it has risen. For me, this stage feels like art - you have a blank canvas to paint on.
Yesterday I made up my dough - here is my recipe in pleb format (no % etc.) :
400g starter (fed up on 1 part water to 1 part bakers flour, by volume)
712g filtered water
100g extra virgin olive oil
1380g white bakers flour
30g sea salt (Tidman's)
3/4 tsp ground dark chocolate malt
The malt is optional, I add it when I feel like it (which is often).
This made a large batch of dough, which I made into epi, a large round loaf, and some wicked fruit bread. I was interested in how different the texture of the breads was, despite the fact that they all began with the same dough !
The round loaf produced the most holes I've had to date (that's a good thing, right?), so much so that it was impossible to make school lunches from it - the filling kept falling out !
The fruit bread was an experiment, and I'm really happy with how it turned out. During the first rise, I took out a hunk of dough, and worked into it a large handful of dried cranberries, currants and some rehydrated persian figs - these are in the shops at the moment, and I've been rehydrating them in Drambuie (as you do :)). I'm completely addicted to them !
Yippee ! Fruit bread toast for breakfast !
Cheers, Celia
Category:
Replies
I'm curious about the term "dark chocolate malt" does that mean it has a 'chocolate' colour? What exactly is it? The crumb colour doesn't seem to be influenced by the malt.
Boris, you're in Sydney too, right ? What I did was I went to Merilux Paint and Paper on Parramatta Road in Leichhardt. They have a beer and winemaking section (unbelievable as that sounds). In there they had a bag of malt grains - they were very dark roasted - for all of $2.50. It was a big bag too, considering I use a tiny bit at a time. So I just put a little of these grains into the coffee grinder every few weeks (I keep the rest in the fridge), grind them to a fine powder, and keep them in a little jar, which I just spoon into my dough in little quantities. Merilux have other shops all over Sydney, there might be one near you.
I said "dark chocolate malt" simply to describe the colour - I read somewhere that that's how brewers classify their malts. Let me know if you want me to take a pic.
Cheers, Celia
Any way, it sounds like what we Austrailan bakers call "trumalt"; used to introduce primarily colour, but inadvertantly flavour also, into bread, and I didn't know obviously brewing also. It has no active enzymes so it has no effect on maltose development. Ok, thanks, I was just curious. Have you made this bread without the malt and compared the flavour differences?
All of them! The lovely huge holes! The aesthetically pleasing fruit bread (I'm going to soak some figs in a bit, thanks!).
<insert lots of oohs and ahhs>
[quote=Danubian]alright!
Any way, it sounds like what we Austrailan bakers call "trumalt"; used to introduce primarily colour, but inadvertantly flavour also, into bread, and I didn't know obviously brewing also. It has no active enzymes so it has no effect on maltose development. Ok, thanks, I was just curious. Have you made this bread without the malt and compared the flavour differences?
[/quote]
Yes, I make the bread both with and without malt, depending on my mood. The bread with malt is always a bit more interesting, although not radically so.
Here's a photo :
Trumalt is malted barley grain toasted to a deep brown colour. Actually there are three colour grades, light, medium, and dark. Toasting deactivates the amylase enzymes which degrade starch into maltose.
Personally I'm not keen on it as I believe it has an overpowering flavour and aroma even if used in small quantities such as ~ .5% or 50g of malt to 1kg of flour.
Anyway, your bread looks fantastic, I especially like your 'round' loaf.
Anyway, your bread looks fantastic, I especially like your 'round' loaf.
[/quote]
:) Thanks Boris. I'm sure there's a proper name for it, though ? Would you call it a "boule" ? I'm not sure, so I'm reluctant to sound like a pratt.
I'm adding very little of the ground malt (<1 tsp in 1400g flour), but I do like the slightly rustic feel it gives to the finished product. I think it's much less than 50g to the kg, probably more like 2g.
Cheers, Celia
Bakers flour is high protein bread flour. I find it makes a big difference to how much the bread rises etc. I use plain (all purpose) flour for cakes and cookies, and bakers flour for all my doughs.
Cheers, Celia