Category Archives: Mellow Bakers

Soft butter rolls and (rye sourdough with walnuts)

Egg glazed high baked rolls

Here we go with two of the September breads for Mellow Bakers, who are baking their way through Bread by Jeffrey Hamelman in an easy going and take our time sort of way. Join in, bake a couple of breads with us, bake loads, it’s all good fun!

I baked these rolls a little hot, hence the colour, and they were very petite in scale. The dough took forever to prove, no idea why and I wasn’t very optimistic, but I managed to make them. Didn’t read the bit about putting them close together, if I had done that they would have risen like batch rolls and then the sides would have been soft.

I only made a half batch which was plenty for us and we had them for lunch with some good Ardennes paté. You can taste the egg and the butter in them, a little like a poor cousin of a brioche, perfectly nice as a side roll goes. I would say make sure you use good quality butter if you make these as it will show if you don’t.

Good with some chunky paté

They reminded me of meals in old fashioned restaurants with my grandparents, with stiff white linen tablecloths and dusty wineglasses; the waiters would ceremoniously bring you a teeny tiny roll, which you would try to eat slowly, and always ate really fast because you got bored waiting for the food to show up…. Some of the other Mellows said they weren’t too keen, we thought they were fine, they are what they are that’s all.

♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣

I could lie a bit at this point and post a picture of the rye sourdough with walnuts, but the fact is you can’t smell pictures. The rye sourdough with walnuts was not a success. I thought I would be adventurous and added some walnut oil to the dough. Unfortunately I didn’t smell the oil before I tipped it in and it had gone stale and the smell of the bread when I had baked and cut it was so bad I had to throw it away. (weeps bitter tears….) There is a moral in that somewhere…. I might make it again one day but not just yet.

To see what the bread should have looked like have a peek here at Natashya‘s lovely take on this or Andrea‘s light and open loaf and maybe visit Mellow Bakers here to see what the others come up with this month.

But to cheer you up after that sad news here is a picture of Zeb instead!

Please suggest a caption for me!

Hamelman’s Five Grain Bread with Old Pizza Dough

: Happiness is a well risen loaf of bread!

This was meant to be a catch up post from the August breads for Mellow Bakers but is in fact a bread that’s not on the list. Whoops!

Somewhere I have got a little muddled up so I made this bread which is not the straight five grain bread (one of August’s breads) but the five grain bread with paté fermentée on page 129 of Bread – A Bakers Book of Techniques and Recipes by Jeffrey Hamelman. Does it matter? All I know is that this was a drop dead gorgeous loaf which made me happy and stayed fresh and moist for three days, we have half of one left and I will definitely make this one again. It’s a keeper. It reminds me of the light rye with its light crumb and full flavoured crust, just enough seedy interest and with the extra boost to the flavour from the old dough. Wonderful stuff!

The grains are exactly as written in the recipe, a mixture of golden linseed, chopped rye, oats, sunflower seeds and wheatflour – a cold soaker, nothing complicated; all mixed into the yeasted dough and then finally the paté fermentée, which is just a fancy way of saying some old dough. At this point I confess freely that I deviated from the recipe and excavated a solo ball of Abby’s pizza dough out of the freezer, defrosted it over night and used that. Old dough is old dough and I figured the hydration would be ok, the pizza dough is about 70% (factor in evaporation, time in freezer – I’m kidding, right?) and the formula calls for a paté fermentée of 65% hydration.

: Hopefully they’ll both fit on here…

It made an easy to handle dough that shaped into neat tight boules which I popped into two bannetons. All was going well, in fact better than well, the oven was on, the peel was dusted, I had found my lame, tipped them out onto the peel, admired the fact that they didn’t collapse, always a good sign, calmly slashed them…

: Slashing with a nice red knife

… I turned to the oven and it was only on 170 ºC. What !!!!! It had been turned on, and the oven’s default temperature is 170ºC and I HAD FORGOTTEN to turn it up. So, in not so quiet desperation, I flipped it up to 250 ºC, cuddled the dough a little, whispered sadly and helplessly ‘Be patient, just wait, just hang on in there, please stay calm, please !!!’

I got a little water and painted it into the slashes to distract them while they waited, and the boules were very good and just sat there and didn’t move for ten minutes while the oven guiltily heated up and then in they went.

I got my reward then, I just sat there in front of the glass door and watched them spring and sighed with happiness. Once they were done I took them outside to meet the pears which we were hastily taking off the tree in anticipation of stormy weather. It’s all go here!

: Bread and Pears

What? You want a crumb shot too? OK.

: Make this bread – it’s delicious!

40 Percent Caraway Rye

Two loaves of 40% caraway rye

One of the August breads for Mellow Bakers. The shine is from a light wash of cooked cornflour (cornstarch) on the loaves while they are still hot. I never know what makes these breads so orangey in colour, is it the caraway seeds? I wonder who would know the answer… This bread is a sort of compromise between a light rye and a serious rye. It’s not my favourite, but it is still a good bread.