Big Ben K asked me to make bread for him as he's on a salt-free diet and everything commercial he buys either gags him with salt, or is flavorless in the extreme. He eventually wants to learn to make his own bread so I'm working out a recipe he can do at home. This is a variation of what has become my go-to recipe for everyday bread.
All the flours were purchased from Breadtopia.com, except the bread flour which is a store brand, Weis, I think. I use a digital scale to measure 500 grams of flour for a poolish and 500 grams for the dough. Ben doesn't have easy access to a scale so I measured these by volume and weight. Two 1/3 cups of each of the following flours went into the poolish bowl; Bolted Organic Heritage Stone Milled Turkey Red, Bolted Stone Ground Organic Spelt, Bolted Organic Kamut and Bolted Bread Flour which just happened to total 525 grams.
I added 600 grams of room temp water and 1/2 teaspoon of SAF Red Instant Yeast from kingarthurflour.com, mixed it with a dough whip and let it set for about two hours until it began to bubble, then it went in the fridge over-night.
The poolish sat for two hours coming back to room temp before I added a half teaspoon of kosher salt, two teaspoons of yeast, a tablespoon of diastatic malt powder, 100 grams of warm water and one tablespoon of EVOO. A quick mix with the dough whip and I added 500 grams of bread flour and worked it into a dough by hand. I gave the dough a 30 minute rest before dividing it in half. Each half went into the KitchenAid mixer for 7 minutes before being recombined and let rise for an hour before I folded it once and let it rise another hour. (The rise was beyond my expectations! I'm guessing the mixer developed the gluten much more so than my usual feeble hand kneading?)
My shaping is
still on the lame side, but a 45 minute final rise while the oven stone
reached 525F, a few quick slashes with a Lame (as lame as my shaping
skills) and into the oven the loaves went with a cup of cold water pitched into a pan on a lower rack for
steam.
Ten minutes later a second cup of cold water went in and the temp was reduced to 475F for another ten minutes. The loaves swapped places on the stone and baked another ten minutes before I removed them to the cooling rack, where they promptly began crackling and hissing like I've NEVER had bread do before!
Ten minutes later a second cup of cold water went in and the temp was reduced to 475F for another ten minutes. The loaves swapped places on the stone and baked another ten minutes before I removed them to the cooling rack, where they promptly began crackling and hissing like I've NEVER had bread do before!
