I baked a sourdough loaf using Kamut for the first time. It wasn’t the easiest thing to find here in Toronto, but I recently came upon a new organic market that carries Kamut grown in Canada. The colour the whole grain flour is a lovely butter like yellow.
This is a 20% Kamut, 80% strong white flour. 9% pre-fermented flour.
Autolyse for 3 hours then added levain, salt and more water to give a hydration of 78% followed by Rubaud kneading to ensure that salt and levain are well mixed until smooth. Then over the course of 6 hours a stretch and fold, followed by lamination and then three sets of coil folds were done during the first 3 hours. Pre-shaping was done when the aliquot jar had risen 40%, followed by a short bench rest and then final shaping. The dough in banneton was left out at room temperature until the aliquot jar showed a 50% rise then cold retard was done in the fridge overnight and baked in the morning.
I think doing pre-shaping and shaping are having a negative effect on the crumb causing it to be tighter than it should be optimally. Since I do coil folds they act almost like pre-shaping anyways so I’ll go directly to shaping unless the dough feels quite loose.
@Bentio I think your bread looks yummy! I love occasionally adding Kamut to my basic no-knead sourdough recipe as the “whole grain” component, so I keep some of it in the house. Its beautiful color, buttery flavor and texture is just lovely. I use Breadtopia’s organic high protein bread flour (your strong white flour) and regularly use Turkey Red Whole Wheat or White Whole Wheat as the whole grain choice. I buy all my whole grain as whole berries and mill them as I need them. I’ve got a Mockmill 100 that I purchased from Breadtopia back in February 2018. I actually purchased all my bread making supplies from Breadtopia and still do as needed.
I do love Red Fife as well but decided to just stick to one darker whole wheat due to storage space. I keep all my extra flours and grains in my freezer and just keep one bag of the ground bread flour and one bag of my ground all-purpose flour (for feeding my sourdough, named Cyril) in my refrigerator.
I used to call my freezer “the meat locker” but now that it has to share its space with my flours, grains, fruit, meat and fish its name has changed to “the vault”, LOL! I keep my frozen veggies in the small freezer attached to my refrigerator in the kitchen. VERY thankfully our children bought us a separate free-standing upright freezer as a Christmas gift back in 2016. It’s been a blessing, especially during this COVID-19 situation.
This morning I baked a no-knead cinnamon bread for my husband. Due to my husband’s health needs, I modified Eric’s sourdough cinnamon raisin recipe back in July 2018 so that it’s “safe” and it’s one I bake about every 10 days or so. That way my husband has his “special bread” for breakfast toast every day.
When I bake I slice, bag and freeze my breads so I have them readily available as needed. I regularly bake my husband’s bread and then some good basic sourdough and sometimes a rye bread. One of my personal favorites is Eric’s cranberry-pecan bread. That one toasted with some good butter or a smear of almond butter (or peanut butter) and jam is a delight. God bless having a toaster oven, LOL! It’s just the two of us so I only bake about 3-4 times a month for our personal needs. Of course, my Cyril gets fed about every 10-12 days so instead of discarding any of him, I make a batch of sourdough pancakes before he eats. I simply can’t waste any Cyril. To me, that would be a sacrilege! Cyril was a gift from a dear local friend and he’s been my faithful happy starter since he came to live with me in February 2018. I look forward to the day I can once again share my breads with family and friends.
Hi Leah, thanks for sharing! Nice to get to know other bakers on the site. I can’t say that I could detect any particular flavour from the Kamut, but the colour of the crust near the fracture at the ear was a lovely colour from it I think. Next time I bake with the Kamut I will try increasing it to maybe 30% while keeping it the only wholegrain to see what the flavour is like.
The crumb wasn’t anything to write home about, I think it was related to my too excessive pre-shaping and then shaping. I’ve only recently started pre-shaping my hearth loaves and I think it has been detrimental to my crumb, I guess time will tell.
Your cinnamon raisin bread must be great otherwise your husband wouldn’t want it for breakfast every day! I like the sound of the cranberry pecan bread, that sounds yummy.
Living in a condo you can imagine storage space is at a premium. I wonder if I’m the only person who has to keep some of their flour in their bedroom closet! We don’t have room in our only freezer, that is in our side by side fridge. We definitely don’t have space for a deep freeze otherwise I’d be keeping my whole grain flours in the freeer.
