Bavarian-Style Whole Grain Pumpernickel Bread (28 of 42)

 Before getting to the assignment, I thought I would share a tip I  saw in the most recent Cooks Illustrated.  It is not particularly pertinent to this assignment, but I was afraid I would forget to mention it if I waited.   It is a method of getting seed, grains and such onto your loaves, and works best for baguettes and other longer or oval loaves, though you might try it with a boule.

You sprinkle your topping onto a rimmed baking sheet (I just put some on the counter), and after you loaf is formed but before rising you roll the loaf in the seeds.  DUH! 
 





 
 Cooks suggests rolling the loaf on a dampened towel first, to moisten it, but I found that not to be necessary with our HB in 5 dough, though it may depend on the moisture in your dough that day.  To save a towel, you might just use wet hands to form the loaf.  Anyway, when I tried it it worked really well,  so I thought I would share. I rolled one loaf all around, and so covered the whole thing, and then tried only rolling half the loaf.  (The top one is the HB in 5 seeded oat bread and the bottom one is the AB in 5 semolina bread with sesame seeds.)  So that is my mitzvah du jour. 








This fortnight is (almost) all about pumpernickel.   According to About.com "There is also a popular rye bread called pumpernickel, which was a West Phalian specialty (Osnabruck and surrounding area). It consists of cracked and whole rye berries which are soaked overnight in hot water, then packed into a closed mold and steamed for 16 - 24 hours. Modern production has reduced this time to 12 hours by adding yeast or sourdough to the mixture to help the heat penetrate through the dense dough through rising. Beet syrup is often also added, but the taste and aroma comes from caramelization and the Maillard reaction during baking. It can be stored for several month to several years and was used in the Middle Ages as emergency rations."

Our pumpernickel was baked, not steamed; for 30-35 minutes, not 12-24 hours; and we ate it all in a day, rather than keeping it for several months; so I cannot say if it would have stored for years or not, but I doubt it.  

Our bread gets its dark color not so much from the  Maillard reaction (a chemical reaction between an amino acid and a reducing sugar, usually requiring heat) as from caramel coloring and molasses, both of which contribute to the flavor profile.  The AB in 5 pumpernickel also uses espresso powder and cocoa powder.  I have used both of those in this dough when I made Date Nut Pumpernickel, but with the added whole grain and dark rye I am not sure how noticeable they really are.

We were supposed to use a brotform to shape this loaf as it rises, but the wetter HB in 5 dough can stick, which only leads tears, so I baked mine in my perforated bread pan.  It baked up nicely

and had a good crumb and flavor. 

The other loaf we were to bake was a rye/pumpernickel braid.  I did a two strand braid, because that is one I can do.  

 

It baked up nicely, although the color difference is not particularly noticeable from the outside, (except on the bottom).  

 

After making these breads I still had a little pumpernickel dough left over, and I baked (cooked) it as I would for Naan.  AB in 5 suggests using a cast iron skillet to make naan, which I have done, but it holds heat so well that it can overcook quickly, so this time I just used a 10 inch non-stick skillet, heated some oil in it, rolled out the dough and threw it in the pan.  I covered the pan, and after a few minutes, flipped the dough, covered the pan and cooked for a few more minutes.  It is the quickest bread you can make, and it turned out beautifully, soft and chewy and delicious.  

Instead of saving some rye dough from the previous exercise for the braid, as instructed by our Fearless Leader (I never have followed directions well) I made two half batches, one for last time and one for this time.  As a result, I had extra rye, and was suffering some baker's remorse for not having "manned up" and used my brotform for the pumpernickel.  So I used it to make a loaf of rye.  I used plenty of flour, and the dough was not too wet, so it worked pretty well.  No tears.

 

I also used some of the extra rye to make the ham, cheese and sauteed cabbage variation of the Stuffed Sandwich loaf.  Similar to Danielle's Stuffed Reuben, it was really good, especially with the rye bread.  

Well that is it for now.  Check back next time for Apple Barley Bread and Whole Grain Butterfat-and-Yolk-free Brioche. 

Whole Grain Rye (27 of 42)

First, a plug.  The great Backyard Bird Count starts this Friday, February 18th, and runs through the 21st.  It is fun and easy.  You can do as much or as little as you want.  All you need to do is count birds at one location, your backyard feeder for example, for a minimum of 15 minutes on one of the days of the count and submit your information.  Check out the GBBC website for details.

With this assignment we are  back to rye.  In 2010, researchers in Lund, Sweden published research that shows that even light rye flour (without the bran) is good for your blood sugar levels. The bran also contains important minerals and vitamins.

As I discovered in my earlier post on rye, rye grows in conditions where wheat does not do well.  (According to About.com "It grows in poor, sandy soil and under mixed weather conditions, while wheat grows best in a warm dry climate, so despite poorer yields than wheat, it was grain of choice in colder areas.")  In such areas 100% rye bread was common, but now most rye is "lightened" with wheat flour, in part because rye has a distinctive taste that can be too strong.    Well, since we were baking rye I decided to bake a 100% rye loaf to check it out.  I used the 100% Whole Wheat Plain and Simple recipe from HB in 5, but substituted rye flour that I ground myself.  That was it.  I did not even add caraway, so we could see what the rye tasted like unadulterated.   I only made a quarter batch, enough for 1 loaf. 










The loaf was a bit dense, and certainly had a distinctive taste, but we enjoyed it.  We tried to come up with a description of the taste, (impudent, with a musty, earthy insouciance) but failed.  Practically Edible describes it as a "heady, slightly sour taste."  World's Healthiest Foods notes "Rye has a very hardy, deep, nourishing taste."  (The site also notes that "Rye Can Ease Your Ride Through Menopause While Helping Prevent Breast Cancer.") 

In doing some follow-up research I found at About.com  that "Rye flour can be tricky to work with because sugars (carbohydrates) called pentoses (xylose, arabinose) reduce the ability of the gluten proteins to form stretchy, hollow areas which help trap the gas in bread, but are themselves responsible for trapping water and building the crumb "scaffold". Starches in the flour help this scaffolding hold together and create a bread that does not crumble.   However, since these starches can be cut into many smaller pieces by alpha amylases (a type of enzyme) which would reduce their ability to interact with the pentoses, a low pH is used (sourdough) to inhibit the amylase.  All these interactions make the crumb of rye bread denser than that of wheat bread. Often, rye is used together with wheat flour to make what the Germans call 'Mischbrot'."  The article summarized "As the amount of rye flour in a bread increases, the longer the bread stays fresh and the stronger it tastes of rye. The more wheat flour, the higher the bread rises and the 'milder' it tastes."  Well, there you go.

The Whole Grain Rye used for this assignment includes roughly equal parts of rye flour, whole wheat flour, and AP flour.  As a result, it makes a lighter loaf, though with the whole grain rye and the whole wheat flour it is still plenty sturdy.  

The first part of this assignment was to bake a regular loaf of rye.  My loaf baked up nicely, with a good crumb.  We liked this bread a lot.  And it also makes great toast. 

 

The recipe called for adding caraway seeds to the dough, as well as sprinkling some on top before baking.  On an episode of Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives one of the eateries baked their own rye bread and used ground caraway seed.  I got some at Penzeys, and used it here.  I think it gives a fuller, more uniform caraway flavor, but that could just be me.  

The other iteration of this assignment was to use the same dough to make a Stuffed “Sandwich” Loaf.  I followed the first of the several variations, using roasted red pepper, sauteed mushrooms, artichoke hearts, and goat cheese.  Since the peppers and the artichoke hearts were both kind of wet, I chopped them up and spun them in my salad spinner.  Then I rolled the dough to 1/4 inch, topped it with the vegetables and the goat cheese,

rolled it up jelly-roll style, and put it in a loaf pan to rise.

Perhaps as an homage to Super Bowl XXXVIII, during baking my loaf suffered a "wardrobe malfunction" (they do call it a gluten cloak). 

 Although this made slicing a bit of a challenge, it was otherwise not a problem. 

 This bread got mixed reviews.  My saintly wife and I liked it a lot.  The best one of our testers could manage, however, was "interesting."  I think that is a Chinese curse: may you eat interesting bread.  (Or maybe it is "may you live in interesting times.")  

One of the main reasons I made this version was that I had all the stuffing stuff on hand, but since this was a rye bread, the version with ham, cheese and cabbage sounded like it would be awesome.  I may give it a try and report next time.  But for this time, that is all.  Next time we are on to pumpernickel. 


 

Gluten-free Crusty Boule and Gluten-free Cheddar and Sesame Crackers (26 of 42)

Well, not to drop names or anything, but one of the highpoints of this fortnight was when da Girlz and I had lunch with Iron Chef Michael Symon.  We met up at Lucky's Cafe in the Tremont area of Cleveland.  Lucky's is a great place with great food.  It has been featured on Diner's Drive-ins, and Dives.  Their Reuben is particularly special--they corn their own beef, make their own sauerkraut and sauce, and bake their own rye bread.  My saintly wife and I split a Reuben, and also split a Cuban sandwich, which was wonderful as well.  Our peeps split the Mac and Cheese, still being young enough to think their arteries are immortal.

And what can I say about Michael!  Well, actually, not much.  We did not exactly sit together.  Or talk.  But he was definitely THERE when we walked in.  He did leave right after we got there, but I am pretty sure he did not leave only because we came in.    Anyway, his aura certainly lingered with us during our lunch.  And really, that whole space/time continuum thing is  just a human construct to help us understand our place in the universe.  So, as I said, da Girlz and I had lunch with Iron Chef Michael Symon.

As for the assignment, we are back to baking gluten-free again.  It is not that we do not use flour, it is that we do not use wheat flour.  Instead, these breads use brown rice flour, sorghum flour, and tapioca flour.  As a stand-in for the gluten, we use a "gum," in my case guar gum because it was cheaper than the xanthan gum called for in the recipe.  Rather than making a whole batch, since we only had to make one loaf and some crackers, I made a half batch.  That is one of the (many) nice aspects of the AB/HB in 5 method, you can easily adjust the size of your batch to suit your needs. 

When I made gluten-free dough for previous assignments the dough was very wet, almost like a batter.  This dough was better, though still soft and sticky.  I mixed it, let it rise, and then refrigerated it overnight.  Next day, I formed the loaf, using wet hands instead of flour, and let it rise in my duct-tape couche.  I baked it in my cast iron pot, covered for 2/3 of the time, then uncovered.

I think it baked up pretty nicely.  There was a good crust, and a nice crumb.  As before, I noticed a sheen to the inside of the holes in the bread, perhaps due to the gum?  

The overall texture was different than wheat bread, softer or more tender, but not in a "Wonder Bread" kind of way, more dry rather than doughy.  Obviously, this texture difference was due to the lack of gluten.

All and all, this was one of my better efforts at baking gluten-free bread. 

As for the crackers, not so much.

The recipe called for rolling the dough out on a silicone mat to a thickness of 1/16 of an inch after covering the dough with plastic wrap to prevent sticking.  Did that.  Then we were to CAREFULLY score the dough with a pizza cutter (carefully so as to not cut the mat).  Did that.

 Then, we brushed it with water (I spritzed), sprinkled with sesame seeds (I used black sesame seeds), and baked it at 400 for 15 minutes.  Did that. 

 Well, rolling to an even 1/16th of an inch is easier said than done, as the picture attests.  I got a thinner area in the middle, which over-browned (burned) well before the rest was done.  And the score lines vanished.   Disappeared without a trace.  Without the scoring I just broke the sheet into free-form crackers, took off the overdone parts, and finished baking the rest.

Though my peeps ate all the free-form crackers, their free form lending a nice casual flair to the occasion,  was not happy with the results.

Now 1/16th of an inch is not very thick.  I wandered the house with my trusty caliper, measuring things. 

A thin bamboo skewer is twice that thick, about 1/8th of an inch.  So is the cardboard on a box from Amazon.  A compact  disc is about 1/16th of an inch.  And so, too, are two of those big rubber bands you get around celery and asparagus and broccoli. So I put some of those rubber bands on the ends of my rolling pin.  (Because I had to stretch them a bit to get them on, I used 3 on each side.)

Then I rolled away.  I used less dough, about half what was called for, to make it easier to work with.  The dough had gotten wetter as it sat, and that combined with the absence of gluten made it very easy to roll out.  I spread the dough on my silicone mat, covered it with plastic wrap, and rolled away.  It was slicker 'n snot!  It rolled out very evenly.

 I did not score the dough right then, I just sprinkled it with seeds and popped it into the oven for 5 minutes.  THEN I quickly ran my pizza cutter lightly over the dough to score it.  Then back in the oven to finish baking.   This worked much better--the scoring did not disappear since the dough had set a bit.

 The crackers baked very evenly, and turned out well.  The only change I would make would be to perhaps bake them a bit longer than I did, but I was a little gun-shy after the over-baked (burned) fiasco of my first effort.

Dilled Rye with White Whole Wheat and Whole Grain Rosemary Potato Dinner Rolls with a Salt Crust (25 fo 42)

Both the Dilled Rye with White Whole Wheat and the Whole Grain Rosemary Potato Dinner Rolls with a Salt Crust use rye flour.  Wikipedia notes that "Rye (Secale cereale) is a grass grown extensively as a grain and as a forage crop. It is a member of the wheat tribe (Triticeae) and is closely related to barley and wheat. Rye grain is used for flour, rye bread, rye beer, some whiskies, some vodkas, and animal fodder. It can also be eaten whole, either as boiled rye berries, or by being rolled, similar to rolled oats."  Pretty useful stuff! (The Wikipedia article does caution that "[r]ye is a cereal grain and should not be confused with ryegrass, which is used for lawns, pasture, and hay for livestock.")

According to WiseGeek  rye has been cultivated for more than 4,000 years. The article notes that"[r]ye is far more tolerant to poor growing conditions than wheat, and it grows in soil of low quality where other grains will not. In addition, rye is able to withstand prolonged submersion in water as well as drought."  Sounds pretty great.   But rye has a dark side.

Rye is highly susceptible to the ergot fungus. And when ergot infected rye is consumed it can lead to a variety of ailments, including "convulsions, miscarriage, necrosis of digits, and hallucinations."  Wikipedia notes that "[h]istorically, damp northern countries that have depended on rye as a staple crop were subject to periodic epidemics of this condition." Ergotism was more common historically, but it has also occurred more recently.  According to a lecture given by Dr. George J. Wong, Associate Professor of Botany at the University of Hawai'i,  "Ergotism occurred in 1926-27 in Russia, with 10,000 reported cases, in England in 1927, with 200 cases, among central European Jewish immigrants," and there was an outbreak in France in 1951.

There is a theory that consuming ergot infected rye was a factor in the Salem Witch Hysteria, see, for example, Bad Rye and the Salem Witches.  Though this theory sounds far-fetched, has been hotly disputed, and cannot be proven, the outbreak of ergot poisoning in Pont-Saint-Esprit, France in 1951 is interesting in that regard.

Time Magazine wrote on Monday, September 10, 1951 in an article on the French outbreak titled St. Anthony's Fire that "Pont-Saint-Esprit speculated that the village idiot had hexed [the baker's] flour."  Sounds like the work of witches--or warlocks.

In fact, tests determined that it was ergot poisoning. The Time article concluded "Pont-Saint-Esprit had been stricken by ergot poisoning, a medieval disease as old as its proud bridge, so old that it had almost been forgotten." Despite the conclusion of the medical experts of the time, as reported by Time, there is a counter view to the diagnosis of ergot poisoning in Pont-Saint-Esprit.  The CIA did it!  See Was idyllic French village driven crazy by LSD in a secret American mind experiment?   CIA.  Witches.  To-mā-tō.  To-mah-tō.


Anyway, as all who know me can attest, I laugh in the face of danger (or at least giggle nervously), so risk of ergot poisoning or no, I forged ahead.   OK.  Actually, according to Dr. Wong, the outbreak in  Pont-St. Esprit in 1951 was the last known example of ergotism.  Dr. Wong notes that "[t]hrough careful screening out of the ergot stage, ergotism is now rare. To clean Rye seeds, a floatation method has been devised. A solution of approximately 30% potassium chloride is poured over the Rye seeds and stirred. The ergot stage is buoyant and will float to the top and can be skimmed off."  But I still laugh in the face of danger.

I first baked the  Whole Grain Rosemary Potato Dinner Rolls with a Salt Crust.  They contain chunks of raw potato, which made them look a bit funny.  On first glance some of my testers thought they were cookies (though perhaps that was just wishful thinking).  For the salt crust I blitzed the rosemary and the salt together in a mini-food processor, stealing an idea from an episode of Diners, Drive-ins and Dives.   I was careful with the amount of rosemary, since it can be strong, but I needn't have worried, it was very muted, which is typical when using whole grain flour, as we have often noted.   I thought the rolls were OK, but nothing that knocked my socks off.  And I am still not sure about the chunks of potato.

 
Since I had a half batch left, I used it to make a type of foccacia.  I let it rise about 20 minutes, spritzed it with olive oil before sprinkling with my rosemary salt, and baked it at 425.  They did not rise much, but were tasty used for blackened tilapia sandwiches. (The orange and yellow strips on the plate are peppers which I picked, and packed and pickled.) 









For the Dilled Rye with White Whole Wheat I used dried dill from the garden, and doubled the amount.  I still did not get much, if any, dill flavor.  The bread was good, however, though without caraway it just did not seem to me like a rye.  WiseGeek notes that "[r]ye has a very strong flavor, which some people find offensive to the taste."  Although breads used to be made from 100% rye flour, because of its strong flavor it is now usually mixed with wheat flour.  I did not notice a strong flavor, "rye" or otherwise, in this bread.  Maybe I will try HB in 5's 100% Whole Wheat, Plain and Simple with all rye some time. 









Since, as you can see from the pictures, my first loaf spread quite a bit, even though I used my 2x2 couche to keep it in check while rising, I baked the second loaf in my new perforated french bread pan.  I also patted the dough out, sprinkled on another dose of dill, and rolled it into a log to rise. 

It came out nicely, and tasted good, but I still did not taste dill.  Maybe fresh dill would have done better, but my dill is under 1 1/2 feet of snow right now....
  
Well, that is it for this time.  We go gluten-free next time, so be sure to check back on February 1st.