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Great article Corvus. I wonder if combining the scald (mash) and levain into a preferment would eliminate the residual gumminess at the bottom of my “extreme” barley bread. If I try that, do you think I should include the poolish too, or keep it separate until I mix the final dough?
The acid from the levain controls the enzymes and if I recall correctly you used a yeast water and I am unsure if there was sufficient acid. Have you made your bread with sourdough instead of yeast water?
Great article @raven although I’ve made tangzhongs and porridges I haven’t made mashes and used the other methods you’ve written about. There are so many interesting methods to use to make great bread, I’ll need to explore these now too.
For those who have Instant Pots, there is a Keep Warm setting. This setting will work well to maintain the temperature of the mash for up to 10 hours between 135-170°F. I’ve been making amazake which requires a temperature of 140°F for 14 hours and have found that the Keep Warm Less setting is perfect. I haven’t tested the the other two Keep Warm settings but suspect they would work well for maintaining the mash at the desired temperature. I would recommend that bakers test their Instant Pots filled with water first and measure the temperature to see what setting works for their unit.
Benny
Great and high sophisticated article, thanks for this special informations it is very important to know about enzymatik in Breaddough and when we should use aktive malt sirup or aktive maltflour. In Europe and special in Austria where i live we use potato mash to give more liquid to the bread and hold it longer fresh. Or to bring in more cereals like sunflower seed, pumkin seed or flaxseed and sesam. I never heard the famous story about this special Anna Bread ;-))
Thanks so much for this great article - I’m so curious to try using a mash! Any recommendations for how to grind corn in my mockmill? I noticed that the photo was captioned “first pass through the mockmill.” Should I do a coarse grind followed by a finer grind? Please advise!
Thank you so much! Melissa has the perfect approach to make a first pass through the Mockmill and then a second pass to make corn flour. I remember that Eric had a demo on milling different grains and corn --a short 20 second video on each one–and this is how he did it. I do not know have that link but it had useful information on how to use the capabilities of the Mockmill.
How about sous vide for the saccarification? A large mason jar would work. That seems to be a ideal way to hold a precise temperature for that long.
You are right—a perfect way for saccarification!
Here’s a whole page full of mockmill milling demonstration videos:
Thanks, Corvus and Paul! I also found this one: Home Milled Cornbread - #4 by Otis Looks like the idea is to first grind on a coarse setting, then re-mill at the usual (for wheat flour) fine setting.
Great article!
Interestingly I was just recently inspired to do something very similar after reading Melissa’s Scalding Experiment post and remembering about the mash technique from Reinhart’s Whole Grain Breads, which I haven’t used in a long while. Anadama is part of my regular rotation but I’d gotten bored with my usual, and thought to mash the corn and use the 2 stage rye sour build I’ve been using from Ginsburg’s The Rye Baker to enhance it.
So basically mine was equal parts fine cornmeal, whole grain hard red wheat flour (Turkey red), whole grain rye flour (all freshly milled), and bread flour. I mashed the corn, 2 stage fermented the rye (I added molasses to the second stage of the sour build to let the beasties eat some of the sugar since the corn mash was adding plenty of sweetness.), mixed the corn mash with the whole wheat as a soaker (adding the salt after 20 minutes), and then adding the bread flour into the final mix. Retarded overnight. Came out with a lot of depth of flavor and moist but not gummy. Nice balance of sweet and sour.
My mash process was very close to what is described here, but I followed a procedure from a whiskey maker. Brought to 160F, down to 150, added diatastic malt, back up to 180-190 to gelatinize the rest of the starches, down to 150 to add more diatastic malt, then held at 150 for 3-4 hours. Mash was quite sweet by the end.
I just saccrinified a polenta porridge using diastatic malt and my Instant Pot. The instant pot makes it easy to do. I cooked the polenta porridge and allowed it to drop below 150ºF then added the diastatic malt. I tasted it at this point to get the baseline in sweetness. I then added water to the instant pot and set it to Keep Warm Normal. I transferred the porridge to a jam jar and covered it but didn’t tighten the lid. I placed it in the instant pot and left it there for the full 6 hours. The porridge is sweeter than it started for sure! I’ll add it to be a dough today.
I’ve not done this with diastatic malt before but it is very effective in bringing out the sweetness of a grain. I’ve made amazake which is actually a very similar process where you use cooked grain and in equal parts add koji rice and then water equal to the weight of the cooked grain and koji rice. This is left at 140-150ºF for 14 hours. The aspergillus oryzae has incredible amounts of both amylase and protease so they break down the starches and proteins leaving you with an incredibly sweet and delicious rice porridge.
I think I may try using the koji rice to do a corn amazake in the hear future.
Thanks for the inspiration.
Benny
Nice! Thank you for sharing your instant pot process and the taste testing results. Corn amikaze sounds so neat too – techniques and ingredients from around the world.
You’re welcome of course Melissa. I should add that the Keep Warm Less setting keeps the temperature around 135ºF and the Keep Warm Normal keeps the temperature around 148ºF. I haven’t tested the Keep Warm More as I expect that would be too high and denature the amylase and protease.
Oh I should also add that the lid of the instant pot is on but set to vent and not pressurize the unit.
100% whole grain spelt sourdough made with a saccarified blue cornmeal mash in a four step process. This process works well if one substitutes bread flour instead of spelt or instead uses a combination of bread flour and rye or wholewheat and Mr. Benny has a posting here with a lovely bread. The first photo shows the levain next to the purple cornmeal mash; the mash when combined with the levain turns the dough red like blue litmus paper turning red from acid.
Levain:
70g wholegrain spelt
35g water
15g starter(125% hydration)
Mix, knead and ferment overnight(8 hours) at room temperature. If it is warm, add small amount of salt-1/4 teaspoon.
In morning, it will be swollen and holes appear on surface. You can put in fridge until you are ready to use it later in the day.
Scald
50g blue cornmeal
135g water
Mix and heat until 155F(68C)and stir and add 7g white malt. Hold for 2 hours, it will turn purple and very sweet.
You can do this in advance and put in fridge.
Sour-scald
All levain
All scald
138g water
Mix until smooth and let ferment for 2 hours or so until it swells and bubbles.
Main Dough
Sour-scald
363g spelt
6g salt
Mix and adjust hydration—I had to add 40g water. Use stretch and folds to get smooth and strong.
2 hour bulk, into refrigerator for 2 hours. Bake for 40 minutes-20 minutes covered at 450F, 20 minutes uncovered at 400 F.
Thanks Mr. Benny! Blue corn mash turns this cool shade of purple when done and you can use the color of the dough turning red so you know how the ph is going.
Beautiful bread! The pH and color change connection is neat, especially with beets.
I feel like I followed the instructions exactly for this bread, but ended up with a very sour brick. I used home-ground spelt in the levains, medium-grind commercial cornmeal in the mash, and a mix of home-ground Red Fife and spelt in the final dough. The final dough never seemed to have much gluten strength, though I did the multiple stretch-and-folds (which were more like just kneading since it did not stretch much). I did do the preferment step and it bubbled up very nicely in that step.
It may have gotten too hot in the mash-hold step. My proof setting in my oven keeps it at less than 100F, so that seemed too cool. I used the Warm setting, which initially seemed perfect at 140F, but when I checked it a couple of hours later it was all the way up to 180F. Could this have been the problem? Did some necessary proteins get denatured?
In any case, my final product looked nothing like Melissa’s.
