Community Bake - Infinity Bread

Things are beginning to come into focus. I will start today by building up my rye starter. I will blog all bakes and link 🖇️ them back here. 

Kind regards,

Will F.

Love the Infinity Bread moniker, Paul! I'll have to see what I can come up with...

Lance

I'll try to bake something in this direction on the weekend. It's quite similar to what I often bake anyway (significant % of whole grain, with seeds - very common approach for me recently, but I don't really bother writing down or thinking through what exact amounts to use...). Thank you for organizing this CB! Been a while since we've had one.

Well, now you've done it, gone and pulled me back out of my spider hole again.

I took my go-to version of Scott MeGee's ciabatta to task here, bastardizing it further by using 40% AP flour, 30% dark rye and 30% semolina.  The final two comprised the majority of the biga.  At the end of the mix I slipped in toasted walnuts and cinnamon coated raisins (thanks Caroline for that trick).

The two hour BF saw a very nice rise with the dough looking thick and shiny, but thanks to the rye it remained quite sticky.  It took a lot more flour on the couche than I desire to use, but I was perhaps overly cautious about the dough getting stuck on the linen

Due to the consistency of the dough it never had that elegant characteristic of a ciabatta dough and indeed the rise in the bake was minimal with the bread coming out unsurprisingly dense and exhibiting none of the characteristics of  what one anticipates in a ciabatta.

It seems to be a fine bread for slathering with butter or cream cheese and/or jam.  And I'm certain will make fine morning toast.  And now?  I'm officially off the hook for completing this CB!

 Comparison to my typical ciabatta bake

Maybe a little bit of both? Smile...

After a 20 minute ride in the Bosch mixer, the dough looks reasonably developed. Smooth, slightly sticky, and tight. Bulk fermentation

The temperature in the fermentation vessel is 77°F. Timer set to one hour.

Did I mention, I hate the mess any kind of seeds make? Please stop by and have a look vat my blog post.

Infinity Bread community bake

Paul!  Thanks for organizing a CB!

I’ve been away from TFL for almost a year with a long work assignment.  Came back just in time for a CB!

 I’m in your neck of the woods this weekend, but I will definitely participate in the CB and post something in the next couple weeks. 👍

Wow! Terrific soft crumb, not gummy at all. I took care not to use more than 20% barley. Then I went ahead with another 14% prefermented source rye . LOL.

I have dough fermenting now for this bake.  I had a bread planned already when I saw this community bake.  The % of non-wheat flour is only 20% though.  I’ll share more later.  Thank you Paul for starting a community bake, it has been a long time since we’ve had one.

Benny

Here's my first effort for this group bake.  Besides the flours, flakes, and so forth in the basic template, I've added some cheese and - get this - salt-pickled sweet corn.  I pickled the corn in early September.  Some of the cheese ran out and left voids, and the corn kernels sticking out remind me of teeth, but the flavor is surprisingly good, with the acid from the pickled corn working against the heavy whole wheat/whole grain flavors to make an unexpectedly good combination.

The crumb is pretty open considering the ingredients, and it has a pleasant chew without being tough.  The crust has a nice crispness without being tough.

Here's the formula-

Formula

=======
102g King Arthur bread flour
99g ww (stone-ground-97% extraction)
30g rye (Bob's Red Mill "dark")
45g masa hariña
15g rice flour
9g ground oats
30g (dry) scald - sifted bran + rolled oats **
6g salt
1 tsp sugar
105g buttermilk***
60g white starter 100% hydration
20g shredded cheddar cheese
30g finely diced cheddar cheese
90g pickled sweet corn/corn relish (rinsed and drained)****

** I used 3 gm ww bran (all that was sifted out) + 7g einkorn bran that I had left over + 20g rolled oats with 90g boiling water

*** I added  20g water during initial mixing and 62g more after a 45-minute rest.

**** I rinsed and drained the corn to try to minimize excess liquid and salt.

Process
=======
- Mix the bread and WW flours, and the salt and sugar,  with the room temperature buttermilk plus the extra 20g water and let rest for 45 minutes;
- Mix in all the other ingredients except cheese and corn;
- Stretch & fold dough between the hands until a little springiness develops;
- Rest 45 minutes and do another S&F.  This time, squeeze the dough with one hand to make it thinner so it can be pulled out more easily.  The idea is to develop some extensibility as well as elasticity;
- Rest 1 hour and repeat the previous S&F;
- Leave the dough for a total of 5 1/2 hours bulk ferment;
- Refrigerate overnight;
- Warm up 1 hour, and shape, adding in the cheese and corn between layers as the dough is rolled up;

- Proof for 2 hours free-standing; uncover for final 10 minutes to develop a skin for better slashing;
- Bake with steam 40 minutes at 400 deg F plus another 18 minutes to dry out the interior.

Pictures -

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This doesn’t quite follow the guidelines of the Infinity Bread for the Community Bake, but it is my contribution.  My non wheat flour isn’t up to the 33% range that is in the write up.  I chose buckwheat flour which I toasted well to bring out the nutty flavour to the maximum.  I used the toasted buckwheat flour as all the flour in a tangzhong.  The texture of the tangzhong is different from what I’m used it, it was clumpy in lumps rather than one big mass.  I chose toasted black sesame and pumpkin seeds as the inclusions and used golden sesame seeds to top the loaf.  Instead of butter I used avocado oil and instead of cow’s milk I chose a sweetened soy milk.  

The details are in my blog post.

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This is the same 80% PFF biga at 79% overall hydration dough as before.  One thing seems to be clear to me.  This corrupted ciabatta formula is one of the few if not just about only that I've run across that just does not want to be a baguette.  The dough seemed wrong at divide and shaping early this morning, and the inclusion of nuts and fruit made the task of shaping more challenging.  Even after an overnight retard which included an extra fold at midnight to punch it down. 

First off - with inclusions like nuts and fruit on a slender dough, shaping and scoring is always going to have its own challenges, more so here.   But they were included in this bake to conform to most of Paul's Infinity Bread Template.  The formula for this dough begs to be handled too gently, shaped with no deflation at all and to NOT be scored, as it was designed for a ciabatta bake.  However, the scoring seemed just dandy until the bread emerged from the oven.  

Changes - Still holding at 40%/30%/30% combination of flours here.  All of the AP flour went into the biga which comprised 50% of the PFF, the other two grains were divided evenly at 25% each.  But the major change was substituting WW for the dark rye and tritordeum* for the semolina.  Beyond that, not much else changed in the composition of the dough nor the methodology until the retard phase.

*Introduced on TFL by Abel Sierra a decade ago, tritordeum is a true hybrid grain of durum and barley - not a mixture.  Unavailable in the US,  I was able to bring several Ks home from Barcelona on a prior trip and I like it.  It handles well and bakes up quite nicely.  On our recent trip back I was able to pick up several K more at our local excellent Forn Baltá bakery in the Sants neighborhood of Barcelona. 

I'm a bit disappointed in the outcome due to the misshapen shaping (the slackness of the dough combined with the craggy character of the dough thanks to the inclusions) and the lack of a decent score.  But can't say I'm sorry for traveling this route, and indeed it is a tasty bread, much more to my palate's desire than the earlier bake.

Bacon, eggs, and infinity Bread. The sunflower topped variety.

Baked rye rolls this morning.

Soaked 100g whole rye kernels overnight from Friday to Saturday, about 18 hrs. They became soft, then I "milled" them in a food processor with some more water to help it go along.

Also overnight refreshed my rye starter, and added the equivalent of ~50g rye flour to the rye grains after they became nearly a paste, and mixed in the same food processor. Added some extra water for a soft consistency. Let it ferment a couple of hours, it rose a bit and became a little spongy. Not sure if it was really ready, but I went with it. Added 150 g white and 150 g whole wheat flour as per the ratio (so in the end 150g each type of flour, if you consider soaked rye as flour), 9 g salt, a spoonful of malt extract, and after combining and adjusting the water to reach a soft dough consistency, added a little olive oil.

Let it ferment with some stretch and folds for some time until it seemed a little risen and ready. Didn't note the time...

Then shaped into 8 rolls and placed into a nonstick baking tray with space between. Sprayed the surface with some water and sprinkled with sunflower seeds. Let it ferment overnight on the balcony outside, around 10 C supposedly. Baked with steam in a hot oven on a baking steel, then browned them without steam. I think the steel browned them a little too much on the bottom, but not too bad.

Totally a coincidence (not inspired by Ilya's great-looking rolls), I just completed my own bake of Infinity Rolls.  The form factor is supposed to be Sheboygan rolls, which are similar to Kaiser rolls but with a smooth top creased down the middle -

https://www.tastingtable.com/1429205/wisconsin-sheboygan-bread-rolls-little-known-regional-icon/

The Sheboygan rolls are white flour, fluffy inside with a bit of a hard shell outside, and used to contain bratwursts in a sandwich.  Of course, with the whole-grain-heavy Infinity template they won't be light and fluffy inside, and will have an opinionated flavor, but what the heck!

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The notable changes from my first Infinity try was to add buckwheat instead of rice flour, and to include a tangzhong made with milk and beaten rice flakes.  Oh, yes, there was way too much water because of some mental blip, so I had to compensate with additional bread flour.  For the seed component of the template I showered the rolls with Everything Bagel Spice (EBS), which is mostly various seeds.

The flavor turned out to be superb. You can taste the rye but it is mild and complemented beautifully by the other grains, especially the buckwheat.  The crumb is very open for a grain-heavy dough like this, and the roll has a slightly harder crust but not tough.  These rolls may be the best-tasting grain-forward breads I have ever made.

Formula
=======
102g bread flour*
99g ww (stone-ground-93% extraction)
30g rye (Bob's Red Mill "dark")
30g buckwheat (Anson Mills)
24g masa hariña
15g beaten rice (in tangzhong)
6g salt
1 tsp sugar
30g oil
215g water
60g milk (in tangzhong)
60g starter 100% hydration (25% ww, 75% AP), overripe
30g Everything Bagel Spice sprinkled on outside of rolls**

* Plus 30g added later because hydration was too high.
** Reduced to less than half for the 2nd batch because mix was too salty.

I mixed the wheat flours with the salt, sugar, and all the water and gave it a 45-minute rest.  Then I mixed in the rest of the ingredients and gave them a good stretching in my hands.  The dough got two more S&F sessions over the next hour and a half.

Because the starter was very over-ripe, I expected that the bulk fermentation would be very slow and that's how it worked out.  However, in the evening I portioned and shaped to rolls. Five of them went into the refrigerator after an hour proofing.  The remaining two I proofed for nearly 3 hours and baked that night.  This was partly to check to see if the planned amount of ESB was all right - it was much too salty so I reduced the amount for the remaining rolls.

The next morning I warmed up the chilled rolls for an hour and then baked with steam. I also broiled them for about one minute total to crisp up and brown the tops a little. These five are the ones in the photos.

Based on this recipe.

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Recipe: 

• 500g Organic Stoneground Wholemeal Buckwheat Flour
• (?) Water
• 10g Salt
• 2 Eggs
• 18g Oil
• Half a packet of IDY
• 100g Seed Mix (35g pumpkin seeds, 35g sunflower seeds, 15g sesame seeds, 15g golden linseed)

Method:

1. Scald 300g of the flour (should be paste like).
2. Soak the seeds in hot water.
3. Wait a few hours. 
4. To the scald add the seeds, eggs, oil and salt. Mix thoroughly. 
5. Add the yeast to the remaining four then add the flour to the scald. Mix thoroughly. You should aim for a rye consistency. 
6. Leave for about an hour. 
7. Portion out into a loaf pan and bake when a nice dome has formed. 

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This is the best textured buckwheat bread i've gotten from buckwheat flour. And the taste was a surprise. It tastes like it has sugar in it. Very surprised how this turned out. Definitely a method i'll be using again when making a 100% buckwheat flour loaf. 

My blog post for this bake.

Kesra rakhsis is a yeasted Algerian flatbread that is cooked on a griddle (could be in a skillet).  For example:

http://thetealtadjine.blogspot.com/2018/03/algerian-flatbread-from-constantine.html

From the link: 

Kersa Rakhssiss is a soft on the inside and crispy on the outside. It's halfway between the Algerian unleavened flatbread called kesra and the leavened bread called matlouh.

People normally cut wedges or break off pieces.  It's normally made from semolina flour.  I've made it that way a few times before.  Today I adapted it to the Infinity Bake template (is nothing safe??)

First, the pictures, then the formula and the mistake I made.

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 Formula for 300g flour
======================
33.3% 100g AP flour
33.3% 100g WW (stone ground 93% extraction)
20% 60g buckwheat (Anson Mills)
13.3% 40g rye (Bob's Red Mill "dark")
1 tsp sugar
6g salt
15g nigella seeds
15g sesame seeds toasted
1/2 tsp instant dry yeast
1 oz oil
water/buttermilk (see below)

Spurred on by Abe's bake with scalded buckwheat I decided to make a scald with the non-white flours and arbitrarily chose to scald 50% of each of them.  That came to 100g non-white flour, and I needed 250g of water in the scald to hydrate the flour.  My mistake was that that was way too much water for the rest of the flour.  In addition, since I wanted to include some buttermilk, I went ahead and added 100g of it.  After all, I told myself, I didn't know how much of the water in the scald would act like free water in the dough.

So the dough came out way too wet.  I added about 50g of AP flour during mixing but though that helped, I didn't want to add much more.  I decided to deal with the dough with stretch-and-folds even though this was a yeasted bread that would be expected to proof for around an hour.  I mostly used wet hands during three S&F sessions over around an hour, and then proofed for another hour.  Then I patted out the ball of dough into a disk about 10 inches across.

This worked, but the large heavy disk of dough was still soft and had to be handled carefully so that it didn't deform much while it was transferred to the griddle.  I knew I would have to cook it at a lower temperature for a much longer time to drive out all that moisture.  So the cook time became 50 minutes instead of the perhaps 15 minutes these breads usually take.  Even so, and even with checking the interior temperature with a probe thermometer, the interior was still a little wetter than I would have liked.  Also, I didn't bother trying to brown the edges as some people do, since it would have taken a long additional time of me standing there holding the bread on edge with tongs.

With all this, there's a pretty decent crumb, and the taste is quite wonderful.  The nigella seeds really come through enough to add little pops of flavor that enhance the bite.  The flavor is grain-heavy, of course, but excellent for all that.

Here is my take on the brief.

It's got:

• 33% Canadian bread flour
• 33% white wholewheat flour
• 7% WG rye flour
• 27% WG spelt flour, including a spelt levain
•  a double dose of seeds at 20% - made into a hot soaker with toasted sunflower seeds, toasted sesame seeds. toasted oatbran, flax seeds
• 20% grated carrot
• seedcoat with mixed seeds (packet mix)

and here's a few pics:

This was the bulk ferment after a couple of folds. The dough was surprisingly stiff.

Not much oven spring on the batarde, but I've come not to expect much on these heavily seeded loaves, especially one such as this with a lot of wholegrain flour. I think they probably bake better as tin loaves, but I like to try!

Flavour was good with a touch of sour, crunchy seeds and a nice moist but well structured crumb.

Bread log here: https://docdro.id/d05iVv6

Lance

Paul, you really got something going with this CB!  Thanks so much for taking it on!  I would never have thought to try any of the three bakes I did without it. I've learned a lot, working them out. And I've learned so much from all the other takes on the theme, too.

TomP

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1/3 bread flour

1/3 whole wheat flour

1/3 buckwheat flour, toasted & scalded with hot apple cider

10% grated raw sweet potato

5% grated granny smith apple

7.5% toasted pumpkin seeds

7.5% toasted sunflower seeds

1.5% salt

levain: 85g bread flour/85g whole wheat/50g buckwheat/50g rye sourdough starter/220g water

This was my first time trying a scald and the total dough hydration wound up being insane -- over 100% bc the scald took all the cider I had and I had to add extra water to get the final dough to come together.

Baked in a dutch oven for an hour at 450F, the first 22 minutes with the lid on.

Initial thoughts:

--this loaf is so moist that it feels almost like crusty cake rather than bread (probably a result, in part, of my heavyhanded addition of water to the final mix). I'm not sure that's what I would aim for if I were to bake with buckwheat again.

--despite all the great ingredients, the whole somehow feels less than the sum of the parts and I need to think about that -- how to bring the toasted buckwheat flavor forward or whether adding some aromatic seeds might increase the depth of the flavor or if I need to raise the sour profile to compensate for the cider sweetness.

--I might try this again dropping the buckwheat to 20% of the total and using bread flour for the rest -- to maximize the loft and airy quality.

Rob

Paul, thanks for organizing this Community Bake.  The result for me is a new bread that I intend to bake again (with some tweaks next time).

A preferment seemed a good idea, and I combined some starter (40 g) with bread flour (100 g) and whole wheat flour (100 g) along with water (250 g).  That sat overnight and by the next morning had expanded nicely and become properly bubbly.

The first step after that was to mix everything except the levain and salt.  Into the tub went bread flour (234 g), whole wheat flour (233 g), emmer flour (333 g), rye chops (50 g), oats (30 g), toasted sunflower seeds (20 g), and water (470 g).  The mixture sat for thirty minutes, and I then added all of the levain and some salt (18 g).  The components came together well, and I decided to do some French folds (eighty in all).  Dough temperature was 73F, and my kitchen was 71F.  Four stretch-and-fold sessions followed, with the first occurring twenty minutes after the initial mixing and then subsequent intervals of thirty, fifty, and fifty minutes.  Total bulk fermentation was three hours and thirty-two minutes.

The dough then went onto the countertop for dividing and pre-shaping.  After a twenty minute bench rest, the dough was shaped and placed into bannetons and then put in the refrigerator for an overnight proofing.  The next morning one loaf went into a Dutch oven at 475F, and the other went onto a baking stone at 450F.  Baking times, respectively, were forty-five and forty-three minutes.

The crust has a very nice flavor and an easily chewable texture.  The crumb is flavorful too, and although somewhat dense, it is relatively light.  The overall result is a bread that I will bake again, but with some changes next time.

One change will be to do a soaker of the add-ins.  I opted to let the rye chops soak up water during the autolyze, bulk fermentation, and overnight proofing.  They retained more crunchiness than I prefer.  Another change will be to increase the hydration (which can be achieved in part via a soaker).  Lastly, this dough probably needs only a couple of S&F (rather than four).

Although I have baked with emmer before, this was the first time that I combined it with whole wheat flour.  My sense (perhaps I should say suspicion) is that those two grains produce a nice flavor, and the bread flour provides a lot of strength.  One loaf was given to a friend, and I await her feedback.

Thanks to anyone reading this description, and I encourage you to give this combination of flours a whirl.  Thanks to Paul, I did and am happy with the result.

Thanks Paul for organizing this - what I appreciate about this one is the focus on the non-wheat component and the way it is presented as a framework. Gave me pause to think about this for a long time.

My first thought was to do something wild, perhaps using maize meal or polenta as an inclusion, but in the end I decided to play it safe and stick to rye, and to give myself a better chance of a good result I used sifted rye and some VWG. I also picked the flours carefully, and it is amusing that these are flours actually recommended by Paul himself - the bread flour is Eureka, the wholewheat is the amazing Lowerland estate blend wholewheat and the sifted rye is also from Lowerland.

The one loaf had rye seeds as a topping, I like the crunch it gives.

Had no idea how it was going to taste, did imagine it might be a little like Hamelman's Vermont Sourdough, but the end result surpassed my expectations and the crumb was more open than expected, especially since when I mixed up the inital autolyse the dough felt muddy like a high rye dough does and I thought I wouldn't be able to develop much gluten.

The flavour is more like a slightly tangy sourdough than expected and it didn't taste much like the wholewheat does on its own.

I did work the dough a fair amount - 10 minutes on the dough hook, 30 slap and folds and 36g of the water was added later by bassinage to up the hydration a little from the initial 70%. Think the bassinage also helps with gluten development as it is like a washing of the gluten. Because I need to go to sleep the breads were shaped and put in bannetons 2h50m after adding levain, and the small shrivelled breads went into the fridge. I took the bannetons out for 3 hours the next day before baking to let the loaves develop properly.

Thanks again, this CB certainly stretched me out of my usual baking slumber, and I actually think I've found a formula that I will use again and again.

I've started my additions to the CB.  You can follow along on my blog post.  I'll also post final pictures and comments here when they're done.

Okay, I didn't write down any notes, but I think I made this with:

159g whole rye flour

159g whole wheat flour

85g white flour (all-purpose), plus more for shaping

150g starter

235g pumpkin water

1tsp salt

2tbsps butter

48g raw pumpkin seeds, and about again as much for putting on the outside of the loaf, although a lot of those ended up inside the loaf due to shaping problems.

I mixed the salt, 205g water, and wholegrain flours together and let that sit for several hours, then I added the starter and white flour, kneaded it some, added 20g more water because it felt too dry, then added the butter and kneaded it more, then added the seeds and let it rise for some hours, then shaped it, adding more seed to the outside, put it in a loaf pan, let it rise more, then baked it at 375F for 25 mins in a roasting pan with water and 25 mins out of the roasting pan.

 After the first rise, the dough was very sticky and not very stretchy. It was as if it were mostly rye. The end result also has that feel. It's hard and dense, but at least it's not gluey. Actually, it has sort of a creamy texture. The taste is a bit sweet (I assume from the pumpkin water), but also fairly bland. I probably should have added more salt. I don't mind the bread at all, but my family likes soft fluffy bread, so I don't think I will make it again.

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My contribution to the community bake based on pmcool's specs - This is a delightful bread made with bread flour, fresh milled hard red wheat and bloody butcher corn, water, pepita seeds, diastatic malt, and honey (formula and process are in the original post). The crust turned out nice and crunchy with a toasty flavor. The crumb is soft with a semi coarse texture from the milled corn. My semi-biased tasters gave this bake a 2 thumbs up.

Here's the original post - https://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/73182/community-bake-infinity-bread

Tony

I have been wanting to try this for a while now.  My DH makes Kombucha constantly and I get tired of drinking it, so I thought, hmmm I wonder if I can bake with it?  Starting small and just used it for a soaker, those oats smelled amazing in the morning I have to say.  It turned out I didn't have as many hazlenuts as I thought, so I added seeds.

Here goes nothing....

Soaker:
25g Hazlenuts, roughly chopped
25g Sunflower Seeds
25g Pumpkin Seeds
90g Oats
100g Kombucha
100g Water

Soaked only 25 g of oats with other ingredients overnight and decided I wanted more oats in the am.  So added 65g of oats and 100g boiling water to soak while I prepared the rest.

300g Fresh milled Rye
300 g Fresh milled Soft White Flour
310 g. King Arthur All purpose Flour
160 g. Chopped dates

Put all the above in the bowl of Kitchenaid with 350g of water. Stir to make a shaggy dough.  Let sit for 30 minutes with 15g of salt resting on top.

Add 210g bubbly 100% hydration sourdough starter adjusted water adding about 90g.

Mix until internal temperature is about 76 df  mix in 80g room temp butter, until dough cleans the sides of the bowl.

Cover and ferment about 2 hours, shape and rest in banneton for 3 hours.  Bake in DO at 450df lid on 40 mins 10 mins lid off.

It's delicious, crunchy crust, buttery slightly sweet crumb.  It's going to be awesome as my morning toast. I might have cut into it before I should have....

Thanks for a fun challenge!

Is this enough ingredients for you all 🫣.   I made a bacon and cheese bread a few weeks ago which I haven’t posted yet.  This challenge bread is completely different especially since I doubled the amount of bacon.  I used freshly sprouted and milled green corn flour and freshly milled durum and rye.  I toasted black sesame seeds and used almost an entire pack of bacon.  I shredded the Vermont sharp cheddar.   The durum was supposed to be sprouted but I didn’t dry out the sprouted grain enough and it got all jammed up in my Mockmill 200 so I had to change it up and just use “boring” old regular milled milled flour 🙄.   I was very happy how this turned out.  It tastes phenomenal and worth making again.

I actually buy a smoked bacon Vermont Cheddar when we visit Vermont but that may have been overkill 🙄. You can sprout just about any grain so I figured I would try corn.  It actually creates a “sweeter” tasting flour and was a good match with the fresh durum and rye.  This definitely would make a killer French toast and I’m going to do that for sure.  Thanks for your kind words and creating this challenge which was great fun and tasty too!

I haven't done a community bake yet, and haven't been active here for a looong time, but this looked intriguing and I gave it a try. I had some blue corn flour so that is what I used for my non wheat flour.  I'd been wanting to try a bread with some of this flour since I received it this summer.  

Full post with formula and description is over on my blog post: https://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/73238/community-bake-infinity-bread

Thanks, this was fun as I was out of my element compared to what I usually bake.

After wrapping up my holiday baking I was able to try my hand at an Infinity Bread. My formula didn't quite meet the 30, 30, 30 brief, but it's close. The formula is from Chef Joanne Chang of Flour Bakery in Boston and her cookbook Pastry Love for english muffins. I wanted something easier for production in my micro-bakery so wanted to make it in a loaf. I did an experiment with it awhile back and one of my customers said it was the best bread I ever made. The formula uses an overnight poolish.

Poolish

• 100% Bread Flour
• 85.71 Water
• .10 Instant Yeast

Final

• 42.43% Bread Flour
• 28.28 Spelt
• 29.29 Whole Wheat (freshly milled)
• 100% Total Flours
• 36.36 Water
• 36.36 Buttermilk (I used full fat Bulgarian style cultured with yogurt)
• 3 Salt
• 1.21 Instant Yeast
• 52.52 Poolish
• 12.12 Butter
• 8.08 Sugar

My kitchen is fairly cool and I went about 2 1/2 hours for bulk ferment with about 3 full stretch and folds; and about 2 hours for proofing. The loaves were scaled at ~400 gr each in a disposable loaf pan, for regular production I'd probably make at 500 each.

Janice

I don't post a lot any more but have enjoyed CBs a lot in the past.  I love using Emmer flour in my bread so I have based this bake on his version. 

I refreshed my starter, initially 15g:15g:15g then thought it was quite sluggish so gave it a mixed feed but I didn’t write down exactly what I did, but it was a mix of rye, whole wheat & bread four. I took 55 g of this and added 182 g water 75 g whole wheat and 107 g bread flour.  This was left over night and was lovely and bubbly in the morning.  I had to go out so popped it in the fridge, planning on being home at midday.  I was however 4 pm before I could start. 

The flour ratio was as Ted used but scaled to make one loaf, so 96 g bread flour + 93 g whole wheat and 133 g Emmer flour plus 196 g of the levain made the night before and 198 g water ( 10 g more as it seemed too stiff)  plus 6.5 g salt

My additions were nominally 10% and started off as kibbled rye, oats and toasted sunflower seed but I changed my mind and went with Cranberries, oats and pecan nuts  (20 g each so no longer 10%).  The oats and cranberries were soaked in 10 g milk & 20 hot water for about 30 minutes. 

After mixing I always do a few SLAFs to bring the dough together and rested for 40 minutes before laminating the dough.  At this point I added the chopped pecan nuts.  I did a further 3 sets of coil folds before leaving dough to bulk ferment.   I had a little concern about the dough at the final coil as it looked a bit different – not smooth as usual.  

 An hour later I decided dough looked as if it was over fermented or degraded so I preshaped and rested for 20 minutes before final shaping and retarding overnight. 

I was also making a 30% rye loaf in parallel and this didn’t look overfermented at all.  Both went into the fridge immediately after shaping. 

This morning I preheated the oven to 240 degrees C scored the Emmer loaf, spritzed it and baked it for 17 minutes in my DO followed by 20 minutes uncovered at 235 degrees C.  The underside of the loaf showed the same signs as the night before.  The smell of the loaf baking was wonderful.  It has come out flat and I am quite disappointed with that but the taste was earthy with pops of pecan and cranberry flavour which I really enjoyed.

 The other loaf which was just a simple 1:2:3 with 30% of the flour rye performed as I would expect. 

 Both crumb shots side by side

 I just don’t know what caused the degradation or overfermentation of the Emmer loaf as it was only 4.25 hours between mixing and retarding.  Any thoughts and suggestions please as I would like to try again – the flavour was great.  

Leslie

I present to you an Infinity Bread realization of soda bread -

For background on this general approach to soda bread, see my post here -

https://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/73572/highrise-soda-bread

This bake follows Paul's general template for Infinity Bread although it's leavened by baking soda instead of yeast/levain, and the hydration is about 100%, higher than the template suggests. I'm sure Paul won't mind, though!

The loaf is a mixture of Irish-style whole wheat, AP, rye, and emmer flours.  Inclusions are caraway seeds to complement the rye, nigella seeds to bring a bit of pop and acridity to cut through the heavy grains, and rolled oats because heck, Irish, right?  The crust is very crunchy all around, not just on the top though that is browned more.  The crumb is surprisingly open, given this is a grain-heavy soda bread.  The taste is stunning.  All the components seem to be balanced just about right, with the rye/caraway making itself known in the background and the emmer moderating the whole-wheaty flavor, making it richer than it would otherwise be.

Recipe
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140g AP flour
140g KA Irish-style whole wheat flour
 84g sifted whole grain rye (or medium rye)
 56g sifted emmer
400g buttermilk
  6g baking soda
 10g baking powder
  8.5g nigella seeds
  5g caraway seeds
 30g rolled (UK: porridge) oats

Process
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- Preheat oven to 450 deg F/232C;
- Line pot with parchment paper;
- Combine dry ingredients;
- Add buttermilk (hold some back until it's clear more is needed);
- Mix in bowl with spatula;
- Adjust buttermilk if needed;
- Bowl folds using spatula - tighten it up but don't work the dough too much;
- Scrape or place into pot;
- Spray or wet top with water;
- Smooth with narrow end of pastry scraper;
- Wet end of scraper and push down to form a cross of slits;
- Cover pot and put in oven;
- Bake 50 - 55 minutes then remove top and bake for 10 - 15 minutes more;
- Remove from oven, decant, remove parchment paper.

 I'm able to get the unusual height because I use a small, 2L pot that is relatively narrow and tall compared with the usual Dutch oven. It's small enough to contain the dough - which BTW was more of a very thick paste - so it has to rise up instead of spreading out sideways.  Note that I did not preheat the pot.

The reason for using both baking soda and baking powder is that the baking soda is enough to neutralize the acid from the buttermilk but I wanted some more rising power.  The baking powder provides that without acidifying the dough.  There's probably more than enough baking soda than is needed to react with the buttermilk, and any extra probably contributed to the browning on the top.