KK Bread Making Tips and Tricks

[Pequod]

1 hour ago, Braai-Q said:

I've been watching this thread with interest and feel that some of you might want to try Emmer Wheat and an ancient Egyptian recipe otherwise you're not trying hard enough. 😄 Like this guy: 

 

 

 

 

Emmer isn’t hard to find, but haven’t baked with it. As for the rest...we’ll let @Syzygies go first...

[Syzygies]

3 hours ago, Braai-Q said:

I've been watching this thread with interest and feel that some of you might want to try Emmer Wheat and an ancient Egyptian recipe otherwise you're not trying hard enough. 😄 

 

2 hours ago, Pequod said:

Emmer isn’t hard to find, but haven’t baked with it. As for the rest...we’ll let @Syzygies go first...

Ha!

There's a problem with my spreadsheet-based incremental development approach to tuning recipes: So far, no matter where I start, I end up with the same standard recipe. I came back from Morocco two summers ago making their thick flat bread,  kept tweaking it, and ended up right back where I was before the trip. These days, I'm working on sourdough rye / pumpernickel / mountain bread. I figure if I keep the rye at 50% this won't turn back into my standard recipe.

What I do for unusual grains is have a "guest" slot in my standard recipe, 10% of some odd grain I have around. 10% never throws off the results, but we can taste it. 20%, even what's supposed to be another version of hard wheat, and the bread can act funny. At 10%, I do like emmer in the guest slot.

As for sourdough ancestry, I'm somewhat of a heretic. I once took home some "California Gold Rush" sourdough starter from the founder of Shenandoah Vineyards (now long retired) and lost it. There's a lot of malarky out there on how one even gets a starter going. The truth is that unless something fairly awful wins fast, the culture is taken over by whatever rides in on one's starter flour. When one gets starter from someone, that culture is exactly like the aliens that shepherded life on this planet billions of years ago: It keeps the peace and watches over the nascent local culture until it can get established, then disappears without a trace. One might just as well use a bit of yeast and save lots of trouble. But wouldn't the yeast take over? If one bakes regularly, one's kitchen is permeated with yeast, like a French vineyard that ferments using whatever comes in on the grapes themselves. Yeast will always be a component of one's sourdough. The other components will coexist just fine.

For other fermentation processes such as the hot sauce I make, I don't trust what's on the chiles. Of course, we have supply chains we don't understand; perhaps garden-grown chiles would be different. But there's a spectacular local pickle shop that relies only on the natural produce to get fermentation going; I love their products but I've reached the uncomfortable realization that they don't keep. Huh.

I did lose my starter last year sometime, forgetting it a week too long in the fridge, and I tested my theories: Just add a half teaspoon of yeast to a flour/water mixture, and feed it each day as if it is starter. One actually doesn't need to wait more than a day to make bread with this culture, it just becomes more sourdough-like with time. That's exactly what happened with mine.

On my recent Giusto's grain run, through miscommunication we ended up with a 50 lb sack of rye berries rather that 25 lbs. I've been using straight freshly ground rye to feed our starter. Wow. It adapted instantly. You could probably just stare cross-eyed at a straight rye starter mixture, and have it take off like gangbusters. Though after reading about ergot (a toxin common in the Middle Ages, where one believes one is hallucinating that one's limbs are falling off, except they actually are falling off), I'm happy having some yeast supervise the starter.

Edited March 31, 2020 by Syzygies

[Braai-Q]

5 hours ago, Basher said:

Braai I find it hard enough baking bread with modern ingredients. I can’t source any of that stuff Tekobo bakes with.
Pequod seems to knock out loaves consistently. I’ll be stuffed if I know how.
I’m trying again tonight. Have a theory that it’s too hot and humid here for dough- even 60% is hard to handle and it does very little for hours, then up to full rise and backs off within 30 minutes.
Today’s dough has spent time in the fridge just as it starts to rise.
Looking pretty good.... so far .



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My comment was of course tongue in cheek. I'm impressed at the commitment levels. Unfortunately and fortunately, we have a French bakery within 2 miles of our house. They import their flour from France and Italy. If you give the slightest indication that you have a comprehension of the French language, they will never speak English to you again. Like ever. So it does encourage a level of laziness on my part when it comes to trying to make my own bread. 

I'm still on my quest for the perfect chimichurri and peri-peri. I'm growing my own Peri Peri chillies which I got from Mozambique and this is the year that I will perfect it. 

[Braai-Q]

I have a question for the bread yodas on this thread, has anyone made naan or pretzels with success? 

I've made Naan in a charcoal tandoor and they were fabulous but you thrown them against the side of the tandoor. Not quite sure the approach with a KK. Just on the pizza stone?

I saw a recipe for pretzels on Big Green Egg's site (it came up in searches, don't worry, I've not lost my way) and it looked promising and then I got to thinking about hot, butter pretzels. 

[Pequod]

37 minutes ago, Braai-Q said:

I have a question for the bread yodas on this thread, has anyone made naan or pretzels with success? 

I've made Naan in a charcoal tandoor and they were fabulous but you thrown them against the side of the tandoor. Not quite sure the approach with a KK. Just on the pizza stone?

I saw a recipe for pretzels on Big Green Egg's site (it came up in searches, don't worry, I've not lost my way) and it looked promising and then I got to thinking about hot, butter pretzels. 

Can’t recall if I’ve done naan, but definitely do pitas all the time. I use a baking steel for these.

[MacKenzie]

This could have been a KK bake and one day it will.

Testing out slight improvements on my 15% fresh ground whole wheat bread that I use mainly for toast. It looking and tasting good to me.

It is a 2 day process and this loaf was baked about 7:30 AM. Did the final fermentation in the cold room which runs about 55 F. It  was in there for around 10 hours. Baked at 450F for 38 mins. right from the cold room.

Down the centre of the loaf I spread about a good 2 inch strip with some of the bran that was sifted out of the flour, the rest went into my smoothie along with my fresh turmeric. Make no mistake fresh turmeric does have flavour, lots of it.

The crumb.

 

[Pequod]

That’s just gorgeous. Love those blisters! 😷

[Basher]

Well done Mac. Yum. That looks nothing like my last pancake.


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[MacKenzie]

Thanks, Basher, but making my bread at 15% is like doing a paint by numbers art work, except it does tasty very good, sour but not too sour. 

[Syzygies]

This is the fastest I've ever homed in on a bread recipe. I borrowed principles and my spreadsheet from before, to adapt a Suas recipe. Then figured out various additions again consulting Suas, e.g. 3% for vital wheat gluten. So far, very different from our other breads, and we don't know what we'd change.

Before this, my starter had always been 100% hydration. It is said that "stiffer" levains need less care. The hydration affects the balance of acids. But the thing about 100% is this: You can slip up measuring either the flour or water first, and the math is simple for what to add of the other. Sometimes the starter needs attention and one is too impaired to give it the attention it deserves.

The Suas recipe I started from used a stiff levain, 50% hydration. Mixing it in with hydrated dough is just as messy and awkward as 100% starter, only the other way. Ideally there is no impedance mismatch: One's levain has a similar consistency to one's autolyse. So I decided that moving forward my starter would be 100% rye, 75% hydration. Levain, what levain? My starter is my levain. This is easier.

One probably wants to use a stand mixer to knead a dough like this. Any sourdough rye dough is rather sticky. Add vital wheat gluten, molasses, and cocoa, and you've got an all-nature sub-flooring construction adhesive.

Edited April 5, 2020 by Syzygies

[MacKenzie]

What a gorgeous loaf of rye bread.   Thanks also for posting the recipe.

 

"and you've got an all-nature sub-flooring construction adhesive." Doesn't that just sound like fun. 

 

 

Edited April 5, 2020 by MacKenzie

[tekobo]

On 3/31/2020 at 4:18 PM, Braai-Q said:

Unfortunately and fortunately, we have a French bakery within 2 miles of our house. They import their flour from France and Italy. If you give the slightest indication that you have a comprehension of the French language, they will never speak English to you again. Like ever. So it does encourage a level of laziness on my part when it comes to trying to make my own bread.

Run while you can, sweet child.  I was once like you.  I made jokes and mocked the Mockmillers.  Bread came from the Czech couple down the road who have built up a fabulous bakery and business and our guest flours came in the form of einkorn loaves from our monthly farmer's market.  And now?  I am a bread obsessive, finding people to foist my bread onto so that I can make more, ever more, in the search for that elusive, perfect loaf. Run, run, run!

[MacKenzie]

Look what came in my mail today, actually it drop a run at the door step. 

I just ordered this to top up what I already have on hand.

[Pequod]

22 minutes ago, MacKenzie said:

Look what came in my mail today, actually it drop a run at the door step. 

I just ordered this to top up what I already have on hand.

 

 

I have hard red wheat on an Amazon subscription! 

Been looking for einkorn berries since I've run out. Apparently the hoarders have made a run on these? 

[Syzygies]

2 hours ago, MacKenzie said:

I just ordered this to top up what I already have on hand.

Organic Durum Wheat!

Let us know how that turns out, we weren't happy with our source. I had hoped to at least make it our primary wheat for pasta, but I was just name-matching. We like Hard Red best, mixed down with semolina flour.

I ordered our Durum Wheat kernels in New York (my work apartment) and flew half of it to California (our home). At JFK security I was selected for testing, perhaps because this looked odd on the X-ray.

As an aside, I used to fly a lot, and I'm no stranger to unusual experiences at airport security. After we moved my Mom from Maine to California, we were closing up her house to sell, and I took responsibility for transporting what we hadn't scattered of my Dad's ashes. Now, we're a bit of an odd family, and these ashes had a storied history. My wife and I were on the phone with my Mom when the box came by postal mail, and she brightly said "Oh, your Dad's home!" He had died from dementia, but the proximate cause was thirst once he couldn't swallow. When I next saw the ashes box, it was still unopened, but there was a bottle of spring water on top. I cautiously asked my Mom if there was any significance to this? No, it was an available horizontal surface. Finally, my family gathered to scatter his ashes from Peaks Island, and my Mom asked that we reserve some ashes for her to keep. We lined a ball jar with some red tissue, and I took the still-unopened box down to the cellar, to my Dad's old workbench. Irish Catholic Mom, woodworking hobbyist Dad. Alter, workbench. Made sense to me. My sister came down to see the proceedings, and exclaimed in shock that I was spilling ashes onto the workbench. "So?!" She then got it. My brother now has this workbench.

To fly with the ball jar, I took absurd precautions, and it was wrapped in substantial foam. I was the first bag for a new shift at security, and this really looked funny on the X-ray.

"What's in the jar?" the agent asked brightly. People in Portland, Maine are friendly.

"My Dad."

I'm a bit insulated from how people outside my family take this sort of thing. Normally after any concern at airport security, you're no longer allowed to touch the items of interest. Here, I basically had to spend the next ten minutes counseling the guy, and he stood as far back as possible while I moved the jar to its own bin to be X-rayed again.

Ok, back to the Durum Wheat kernels. This experience could well have colored my relationship with that variety of wheat.

The Durum Wheat kernels flunked the explosives test.

If you've never had this happen to you at an airport before, let me tell you, it's a real mood changer.

I was no longer allowed to touch my possessions. I was taken to a room, stripped to my skivvies for a body search while they went through my baggage very carefully. This was before I had learned (in fact, how I had learned) that only a complete frickin' moron doesn't have a dedicated pocket in their carryon for their pocket valuables. My wallet, keys, phone, money clip were loose in the gray bin, and they returned everything to me.

Except my money clip. When I asked where it was, the lead security officer flat-out told me I was lying. She was pretty smart; I was struck earlier by her remark that organic grain shouldn't flunk a nitrogen test, was I sure this grain was really organic? But she reverted to form. (I want to say something obscene about Mitch McConnell here, as we're all pretty frustrated in the US right now, but I would be digressing.)

I insisted on filing a police report. Then the money clip appeared without apology. It had stayed in its bin until the bin made its way through the rotation, and a passenger spotted it as they were about to use the bin. Honest person, they turned it in, I got it back. Then the TSA made me wait for the police agent to arrive; the fact that the report was no longer necessary didn't matter. Two can play power games.

One doesn't want to ask me about emergency preparations, on board a dive ship. The computer programmer in me tends to anticipate everything. After a few minutes of my answer, no one would want to dive.

So, yes, like my bread spreadsheets I have spreadsheets for my travel schedules, and I have a very active imagination for what could go wrong.

Of course I made my flight.

[MacKenzie]

That is the same Durum wheat that I have been using for year. My berries are old but they still seem to be working OK.  Many of my pasta cooks that I post on the Forum are made using that same Durum wheat that I just received.

I bought organic winter hard wheat from this same source years and years ago. I also bought organic hard wheat from a local health food store but could not determine if it was the spring or winter hard wheat. When I decided to freshen up my supply I decided to try the organic hard spring wheat to see if I notice a difference between that and the organic hard winter wheat. 

[MacKenzie]

Been looking for einkorn berries since I've run out. Apparently the hoarders have made a run on these? 

@ Pequod, Fieldstone sells organic einkorn berries.

[Basher]

That’s a funny story syzygies.
Do you think the wheat packers could have been shooting rabbits? Or making their own ammo?
One think that amazes me about the US is their gun culture and the ease of access to firearms.
It can be intimidating for an outsider if you are not used to this.


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[MacKenzie]

1 hour ago, Basher said:

One think that amazes me about the US is their gun culture and the ease of access to firearms.
It can be intimidating for an outsider if you are not used to this.

You can say that again. I can remember walking in a park in NY when we came up behind a guy with a pistol tucked into the back of his belt. I could not believe my eyes. The first thing we did was get out of there.

 

 

[tony b]

If you haven't noticed lately, but guns & ammo sales have jumped up during the pandemic. That's all we need right now, is some gun-toting idiot to go crazy in the Walmart over a roll of TP!

And, the NRA is filing suits in states that have forced closure of gun shops as "non-essential" businesses.