{"id":198,"date":"2010-02-13T18:53:25","date_gmt":"2010-02-13T23:53:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.breadcetera.com\/?p=198"},"modified":"2010-02-26T15:41:59","modified_gmt":"2010-02-26T20:41:59","slug":"multigrain-bread","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.breadcetera.com\/?p=198","title":{"rendered":"Multigrain Bread"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Alright everyone. ?Get out your monogrammed stationery and Cross pen. ?This is a bread that you simply must <\/em>write home about.<\/p>\n

Up until this point, I’ve not been a real big fan of multigrain bread. ?Perhaps it’s because I’ve never had the pleasure of sampling a really well-made multigrain loaf. ?To me, multigrain bread has always conjured up images of heavy, dry and tasteless planks of corrugated cardboard. ?But with my New Year’s resolution of trying to eat foods that are better for me (no, I won’t totally be giving up the occasional croissant or slice of brioche but I am trying to eat less and include only natural, additive-free foods in my diet), I decided to revisit the world of whole grains.<\/p>\n

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My main objective was to produce a light crumbed, complex flavored loaf with whole grains. As a starting point, I decided to use the Five-Grain Levain described in Hamelman’s?Bread: A Baker’s Book of Techniques and Recipes<\/a><\/em> <\/em> as a template. ?This bread makes use of a soaker consisting of cracked rye, flaxseeds, sunflower seeds and oats, and, in addition to the use of whole wheat flour, calls for some high gluten flour to support the structure of such a grain- and seed-laden bread. ?I ended up using cracked hard red winter wheat instead of cracked rye in the soaker (who would have guessed that rye berries would be so hard to find in both the national chain and local health food stores?) and found that I had to increase the dough hydration substantially from that specified in the original formula to obtain a beautiful dough with just the right balance of elasticity and extensibility. ?For those mixing by hand, be forewarned that in the early stages of mixing, right after the addition of the soaker, the dough becomes quite sticky and slippery but then becomes much better behaved upon further mixing and full incorporation of the soaker.<\/p>\n

Since the first of the year, I’ve been concentrating my efforts on extracting more of the subtle flavors available from a properly formulated and fermented dough and the incredibly rich, nutty and caramel-like flavor of this bread leads me to believe that I may be making some progress.
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Levain<\/strong><\/p>\n