Category Archives: Mellow Bakers

Beer Bread with Roast Barley Malt

Brian's pic of his fifth slice

It’s almost the end of flaming June and I had one bread left to bake for Mellow Bakers. I’ve been baking lots of sourdoughs and pizza this month,  but there was this one left to have a go at.   Jeffrey Hamelman doesn’t specify the beer, so my fellow bakers have produced very different looking breads, it’s been interesting to see what they have come up with. If you want a peek at what they have been doing in the way of beer breads.  Click here.

So what did I do? I had some roasted barley malt flour from Bakery Bits, so I skipped the part about malting my own barley, which is just as well, as it is really hard to get hold of barley that hasn’t been processed in some way that you can sprout. I can get hold of wheat and rye which are viable, barley for some reason not.

What beer? JH says he used a strong south German beer.  It didn’t give me enough of a clue, so I went with Guinness, it’s dark, sweet and mild and I thought it might be a good one for this bread.

One long straight slash

I’ve never used beer as the straight liquid into a final dough before.  I’ve made barm bread and stout hot cross buns, both Dan Lepard recipes; in those formulae the beer is introduced at an earlier stage in the process, either as part of a sourdough starter or a poolish, and the breads don’t smell of beer once baked which I much prefer.

Cooling on the rack

However, Brian said, “Nothing wrong with this bread!” and ate half the loaf.  It looks paradoxically like it should taste really strong and dark, but it didn’t. It was just a crusty yeasted loaf in disguise really. Soft crumb, crusty, mild tasting with a hint of sweetness and malt, no bitterness, but then Guinness isn’t a bitter beer.  I made it as a long oval shape,  proved in a cloth inside a banneton, and that seemed to work out all right. It had a long final prove, about two hours in all.  So a perfectly nice loaf, great colour, split verdict on the smell.

Update: the following day the smell of the bread has changed and, well, I don’t really want to use this word, but…. it has mellowed :) not as beery, more of the aroma of the wheat and wholemeal and roast barley coming through – so if you make it, hold off for at least 12 hours before eating it.

What do you reckon?

More Vermont Sourdough..

I blame the starter, it wanted to bake, it was begging me to use it. I hadn’t planned on baking more of the same this week.

I made one of the variations on the Vermont sourdoughs the Mellow Bakers are working on this month;  the one with increased wholegrain. I had some wholemeal flour from Melin Llynnon, a restored Welsh windmill on Angelsey which,  ‘ was known as ‘Môn Mam Cymru’, the ’Mother of Wales’ or ‘The Breadbasket of Wales’  because of its capacity to produce wheat and bread flour in great abundance.’ I also used a little spelt and rye to create a good mix of grain.

One day I would like to tour around all the working mills, large and small that are left in England and Wales.  Anyone like to join me?   Like some people dream about bee keeping, I dream about a mill :)

Quick dough notes:  I used a lot more water than the recipe gives as the flours were very thirsty,  and I  added a small pinch of commercial yeast needing to bake the loaf mid-afternoon.  This gained me about an hour and might have helped aerate the loaf a little more.

A small portion of baker’s yeast, up to 0.2 percent can be added to a levain dough without any noticeable changes in the bread’s sourdough characteristics. This small amount of yeast will have a slight impact on fermentation and dough volume.    Jeffrey Hamelman. Bread P. 152

The bread had a really hot full bake and the crust is a little scorched, but we enjoy a rich dark crust;  Chewy, smoky and nutty with a sweet, well risen middle and an interesting texture from the coarse particles of bran speckling the crumb.   This goes on my bake again list!

Jeffrey Hamelman’s Vermont Sourdough

This is the famous sourdough formula from Bread by Jeffrey Hamelman. It’s a 65 per cent hydration pure sourdough made with organic white bread flour and a little whole rye, water and french sea salt and a liquid sourdough levain.

I rebuilt my usual white sourdough to the required hydration of 125% over 24 hours and ended up with a much looser and frothier starter than I normally use. I’m not sure that my palate can distinguish between a sourdough made with a liquid and a stiff starter. Hmm.

Usually I keep my starter at about 90 per cent hydration. I don’t bake every day, so I find it keeps better in the fridge when there is more flour than water in the mix. It usually sits quite happily in the fridge for about five days, then after seven days or so a layer of hooch appears on the top and if I am sensible I discard and feed at that point whether or not I plan to bake. The hooch takes much longer to appear on the rye starter, I don’t know why they are so different but they are.

I mixed the dough up and following the instructions, left the salt out and left the dough for 45 minutes before gently kneading it into the dough.  I used some quite coarse grey french sea salt which has a wonderful flavour.

I was very interested to feel the way the dough softened and changed as the salt dissolved into the dough. Before the salt went in it was very tough and not very extensible, once I had worked on it for about two minutes I could feel it change, fascinating!  I did the usual light kneading and then I left it to bulk prove with one fold after 90 minutes.

I made two 750 g boules, let them relax a little, shaped them again and put seam side up into  two linen lined bannetons heavily dusted with rye flour for the final prove.  Covered with shower caps and…

..back to the poodling pool to throw squeaky toys and have a dabble myself. Pretty mellow for a very hot Friday afternoon in the suburbs…. a hot air balloon or two passing overhead…

Only too soon it was time for heating the oven and the slashing……I did a finger test and figured the dough had almost doubled and the dough felt good and bubbly…

One of these days I will try and work out how to take pictures and slash at the same time, but this was not the day…sorry….

This time I thought, how about a J and a B. Can’t be too difficult can it? The S worked pretty well the other day, surely I can slash any initial on the bread.  Pride comes before a fall…..that was almost impossible. I need to go back and practice calligraphy I think. Not my finest moment, but hey you win some you lose some :)

You can see the results here. So you see the S the other day was a fluke!

I had to bake the B in the top oven as there wasn’t room in the bottom one for two big round loaves.  I can’t get steam into the top oven easily and you can see the difference, I reckon J sprang about an inch more in height and the slash of the lower part of J opened up beautifully,, B looks OK but is not as well risen. Steam really does make a huge difference! Believe in the steam, get it into the oven somehow. Iron trays, spray bottles, japanese rocks. wet flannels, well maybe not the latter, but get the steam in there. It only has to be there until the bread has sprung and begun to take on colour, then you can open the door and let it all out again, it will have done its job. I also think something mysterious happens to the temperature in my oven when I go from 220 C to 230 C.  I certainly can’t use 235 C which is what JH’s temperatures translate to.  230 C gives the very dark crust you see on J and the flour on the top has caught slightly.

As this bread wasn’t retarded the taste was mild and cool,  a little dryer than the Bristol sourdough which has olive oil worked into the dough, with good umami flavours from the very dark crust adding to the general happy mouthfeel of this bread.  It’s the sort of bread that if you didn’t know it had rye in it or you didn’t know it was a sourdough you would probably not really think about it at all.  It’s just a good bread!

The notes that accompany the recipe are beautifully and carefully written, you learn so much from reading this book. Go on, join the Mellow Bakers and have a go at some of these wonderful breads. It’s easier than it looks, (apart from carving your name with pride!)  And, if you’re looking for the recipeso as to dip your fingers in the flour for the first time, try Susan on the WildYeastBlog.com site – her Norwich Sourdough is derived from the Vermont sourdough.