Grandma's Bread #15 & #16 - extrapolated

So I plugged in my weights & quantities from #14 to try to figure out baker's percentages for Grandma's bread #14. Here's what I ended up with (using the Expanded Pizza Dough Calculator on pizzamaking.com):

#15: single loaf based on #14 weights

MAKES 1 LOAF
Flour (100%): 342.88 g
Water (53%): 181.73 g
ADY (1%): 3.43 g | 0.91 tsp
Salt (2%): 6.86 g | 1.23 tsp
Honey (30%): 102.86 g | 0.31 cups
Buttermilk, fresh (85%): 291.45 g | 1.19 cups
Rye Flour (36%): 123.44 g
Total (307%): 1052.64 g | 37.13 oz | 2.32 lbs

Looking at the numbers, it seems funny. #14 and #15 dough is clearly wet, possibly over-hydrated, although wet + sticky dough is pretty normal for rye breads, which don't have much of a gluten structure. Also, according to Rose Levy Beranbaum, buttermilk is about 90% water and 1.75% fat, so the buttermilk by itself brings the hydration to ~76.5% alone (of bread flour only, or ~62.5% of total flours), without the water! This means we need to add ~3.5% water to get overall hydration to about 80%, which is pretty slack. So let's try an academic exercise:

1. Reduce water to 4%, which will make overall hydration ~80% of bread flour (or ~66.5% of flours overall); pretty slack, but less slack than breads up to and including #14!
   
2. Reduce rye to 25% (less stickiness, same flavor?)

So here is #16, the academic exercise :)

MAKES 1 LOAF
Flour (100%): 427.03 g
Rye Flour (25%): 106.76 g | 3.77 oz | 0.24 lbs | 15.43 tbsp | 0.96 cups
Buttermilk, fresh (85%): 362.98 g | 12.8 oz | 0.8 lbs | 23.7 tbsp | 1.48 cups
Water (3.5%): 14.95 g
ADY (1%): 4.27 g | 1.13 tsp
Salt (2%): 8.54 g | 1.53 tsp
Honey (30%): 128.11 g | 0.38 cups
Total (246.5%): 1052.64 g | 37.13 oz | 2.32 lbs

I would recommend making both of these, following same general directions as #14, and see what happens!

Directions

1. Heat buttermilk & water to 100 degrees.
2. Dissolve ADY and honey in buttermilk mixture; let sit for 5 minutes.
3. To mixing bowl, add flours, whisk to combine. Add buttermilk mixture. Mix on Kitchenaid #2 for 2 minutes. Should clear sides of bowl.
   
4. Let rest for 20 minutes.
   
5. NOW ADD SALT. Knead on #2 for 7 minutes.
   
6. Put in tub, cover and let rise for ~2 hrs, then into fridge.
7. Went into fridge at 615pm, out 945am next morning (15.5 hours total)
8. Rise at room temp for 2 hours
9. Preheat oven to 450F, bake 40 minutes with 1 cup hot water
   

NOTES on #16:

• I only added 70g honey (ran out), made up the rest of the weight with white sugar
• Even in mixing, hydration looks a lot more normal. In mixer, dough clears sides of bowl, but doesn't clear bottom (about coffee-cup size); out on lightly-floured board, very easily handleable
• Texture was MUCH tighter than #14, still a bit damp and soft, despite 1 hour rest. Crust was also thicker, not in a nice way.
• Better rise and oven spring than #14 though. My guess is that the yeast is OK, but it needs less buttermilk and more water, as well as overall higher hydration.
  

Grandma's Bread #13

Making a going-away loaf for my lady, who will be San Jose at sommelier school next week. No better reason to bake some comfort food that she can bring with her!

Grandma's Bread #13 - Sept 14-15, 2009

Makes 2 loaves

1-1/4 cups water
2 cups buttermilk
1-1/3 cup rye flour

6-1/4 cup AP wheat flour
2 tsp yeast
1/2 cup honey
3-1/2 + 1/8 tsp table salt

1. Over medium-low heat, warm buttermilk and water, stirring occasionally, just until it curdles and remove from heat. Stir in all rye flour, cover tightly and leave at room temperature overnight (at least 12 hours).

2. In stand mixer bowl, pour in rye mixture. Add yeast, then honey, then flour. Using beater attachment, mix on speed "2" for 2 minutes, until the dough is uniform. It will look like a thick, uniform batter at this point. Cover with plastic wrap and let rest for 10 minutes (should be 20, but I used 10 min this time).

3. NOW ADD THE SALT ALL AT ONCE. Mix using dough hook for 8 minutes, set to "2" (low speed). You may need to clean the dough hook once in a while. Dough will be very thick and sticky; it will never clear the sides of the bowl, more like a thick wet batter...it will not stop sticking! This is why the stand mixer is so handy. Total kneading time is 8 minutes. You will see some gluten strands forming in the dough towards the end.

6. Grease two bread pans with butter, and dust them with white flour. Using a wooden spoon or stiff bowl scraper, turn out the sticky dough onto a very well floured board. Form into a single round; dough will be very soft but with a well-floured board, won't be very sticky and will form a smooth surface. Cut dough into 2 equal pieces, shape dough into loaves (they will feel pretty soft, not quite baby's bottom but close) and place in bread pans. Press down on dough to get loaf to expand across the bottom of the pan. Cover with inflated plastic grocery bag, and leave in warm place to rise for 2.5 hours.

7. Cover with inflated plastic grocery bag, and refrigerate for 6 hours.

8. Cover loaves with a towel, and let rise again at room temp (~74F) for 2 hours.

9. Preheat oven to 450, adjust racks to put bread on 2nd to lowest rack, and put an empty broiler pan at the bottom. Slash loaves down the center with a serrated knife or a sharp razor blade, and place bread pans on rack in the oven. Add 1 cup hot water to pan to steam and close door. Bake at 450 for exactly 40 minutes; they will look dark chocolate brown (almost black!) on top.

10. Take bread from oven, remove from pans. Let cool on rack, uncovered, for at least 30 min; will still be warm 2 hours later.

11. Store in large Ziploc freezer bags when cool; this will help promote a soft crust.

Results

• Inflatable grocery bag worked very well! Even when dough stuck to it, was easy to peel off without ruining texture.
  
• Crust is as good as #12. There were huge, puffy bubbles on the top crust. Had to deflate these before baking; even then a few popped up.
  
• Interior is less holey (see pix). I think it needs more fridge ferment time, more like #11 and #12
• Flavor is the same, again, slightly more damp, with same flavor and texture.
  
• Good rise and good oven spring.
  
• Overall interior seems more damp than #11 and #12; but not too damp, still good. After 30 minutes of resting, still feels like there's steam/moisture coming out.
  
• Brush tops with butter this time after removing from oven. Gives it a nice shine!
  

Notes/Next time:

• Go back to longer fridge ferment time; 7.5 to 8 hours will be best, or overnight (like v11).
• Might have used 5 extra minutes of bake time, or even letting it rest in the pan after removing from oven.
  

the sour life

Well, yesterday's bread turned out really well. Still holding up well today. Beckey said "it's the best bread you've ever made." Her seal of approval means a lot to me, and is very motivating.

I stayed up til 3am last night reading about Lithuanian black rye bread, including about bakeries in the US that produce it and historical and technical recipe information. So I'm going to try it again, albeit with a slightly different tack. My grandma's bread recipe is decent now, I just want to improve it to get closer to what I remember, and I think I can.

The recipe in the Lithuanian Foods book I have uses an active yeast starter. I'm going to try to do the same with the sourdough starter I have now, but modified. I'm also going to try to use their recipe, at least in generalities (2kg of starter and 6kg of rye flour is simply too much for the kind of baking that I do! That's over 17.6 lbs of flour!); that said, it's interesting that they are using a 3:1 flour-to-starter recipe by weight, whereas my version of KAF sourdough is ~3:1.75 flour-to-starter by weight. And unlike my grandma's bread, the recipe that I have uses no scalded buttermilk.

Here's the beginning:

1/2 cup KAF starter
1 cup rye flour (Hodgson Mill)
1 cup water

Let ferment for 24 hours.

So I had some leftover starter, what to do? Starting one more project: Sourdough waffles! Should be ready to rock and roll tomorrow morning...mmm! This is also from the KAF baking book, we'll see how it turns out. We had some pretty good sourdough pancakes that John A. made up at June Lake, we'll see how these compare. Should be interesting; using regular milk instead of buttermilk called for in the recipe. Hope it's close enough!