Category Archives: Mellow Bakers

80% Rye Rebake Quickie

So good I had to bake it again after I gave the first one away; I kept a bigger piece for myself this time.

The mixed dark and light rye version of the 80% rye bread

This is a remake of the Jeffrey Hamelman 80 % rye with hot rye flour soaker. For this one I used a mixture 50/50 of Shipton Mill’s light and dark rye for all the rye flour components of the loaf; the soaker, the sourdough etc. The loaf came out with a lovely caramel-gold coloured crust and crumb. Still a bit on the sticky side, but delicious all the same. I am in love with the sweet smooth taste you get from the hot water soaker. Also look at the difference that cooking in a Pullman tin makes to the crust and the colour of the final loaf!

Crumb close up

80% Rye Bread with a Rye Flour Soaker Part 1

Last of the ryes for me this month!

This Jeffrey Hamelman rye bread was made with Bacheldre organic stone ground rye, a much coarser sort of rye than the usual Shipton Mill one I use. This bread is made with a rye flour soaker and a rye sourdough.

A rye flour soaker? A soaker is when you pre-soak one of the ingredients of your bread; could be linseeds, could be whole grains, could be an old crust of a nice loaf. In this bread the soaker is a quantity of rye flour, covered in boiling water and mixed up and left overnight. The boiling water gelatinizes the flour and it has a remarkable effect on the final bread. It’s no more trouble than making the sourdough the night before and it changes the character of the bread noticeably giving a smooth, sweeter quality to the crumb. I think they must do this a lot in German rye breads as that is what this sort of rye reminds me of.

In Part 2: The crumb shot and my mother’s recipe for Gravad Lax

Bialys for Mellow Bakers

Teaser….

A quick bialy post for Mellow Bakers, last one of the month; we’ve had French bread and a very serious rye and this is the fun one, so I saved it to now.

Some of the other Mellow Bakers who have made these so far:

Natashya at KitchenPuppies
Paul at Yumarama,
Steve at Burntloafer

I read what the Mellow Bakers who have made them already had to say about using raw onion and breadcrumbs, and the consensus seems to be that they didn’t like them, so for these I sweated some chopped white onion in a spoon of butter for about twenty minutes till sweet and golden and then added them to some Polish breadcrumbs I found in the cupboard. Don’t ask me what they were doing there, I think I went out to get Panko and came home with these one day.

The extremes I go to….

Made dough, folded dough, proved dough, then scaled dough into 12 pieces. Shaped dough into tight rolls and left on trays. Links to recipes elsewhere on the net below if you need one.

Looks organized doesn’t it?

Forewarned about the tendency of these rolls to spring back to life like some mad Bouncy Castle and either ping their toppings off, or engulf them, I left the rounded doughs for a lot longer than Mr Hamelman advises (well, I like to pretend that I did this on purpose but as you who know me might realise, I forgot about them) and the dough was well and truly proofed and starting to stick together by the time I remembered again.

Fully proved

The good part was that the dough was pretty tired by the time I got back to it, so it was really easy to make the flat middle bit….

shaping the flat bits

And then, Dear Reader, I filled ’em and baked ’em, they don’t take long in a good hot oven, and out they came. Looking golden and smelling of hot onions….

….but they are chewy, I think they are supposed to be. Sort of thing to keep you occupied as you wander through New York City early in the morning on your way to work, chewy because who wants crumbs down their work clothes, chewy, well just because…..they are

BIALYS!

Where is no 12?

Recipes for bialys on line if you want to have a go….Here’s one done in cups. If you want Mr Hamelman’s version you might have to get the book, but it is apparently a standard sort of recipe.

PS I’ve just looked them up on Wiki which says they are named after Bialystok, a city in Poland, so my breadcrumbs are appropriate which is a bit spooky.