Flour Test - German Ciabatta premix

I am very happy to have received a gift of flours from some friends recently. The 4 bags included a Ciabatta premix, Volkonbrot mix, Spelt and Rye flour. I started with the Ciabatta premix because it was a bread that I was familiar with. Moreover, I did not have the time to translate the German instructions for the rest of the flours. 

Thanks to the internet, language is no longer a barrier. I was able to figure out the contents of the package with minimal effort. The premix contained sugar which is one ingredient I seldom use. As a result, the bread turn out a little darker than usual. I tweaked the hydration up to 70% as the specified 65% was dryer than the Ciabatta dough that I was used to handling. Even so, I felt that the bread might have been better if I had adjusted it up to 75%. I did not follow the instructions on the package as I preferred my own method. Besides, it was a working day and I only had 30 minutes to make the dough.

The verdict? The flavor was good considering the fact that it was just a 12 hour bread made without preferment. The bread was a little more salty that what I was used to making so it would be better to go with unsalted butter. The crust was a little different from bread made with my regular flour. It was crunchy and was easier to bite off, exactly the quality of crust that I had been looking for. I wonder how I can tweak my regular flour to get this kind of crust.

Flour Test-Everest Chakki Atta

I paid a visit to Mustafa on my day off and spotted some Atta flour that had spilled onto the shelf. It was a nice creamy color and that made me pick up a pack to try out. Chakki Atta is 100% stoneground wheat flour. It is probably made from a soft wheat. I was quite happy with the results as the crumb was relatively open for a 100% whole-wheat bread. The flavor was very good and tasted fantastic with butter.

I decided to use the entire pack as I did not want to leave any lying around. There is just too many packets of leftover flour from our kitchen exploits. Sometimes I wish I can just dump everything into a mixing bowl and come up with something nice but alas, I know only too well that the end result are usually monstrosities.

For this 100% whole-wheat bread, I decided on a hydration of 80%. The poolish was made the night before and this morning, it was incorporated into the main dough. It has been some time since I had made a 100% whole-wheat loaf but this time round, I felt a level of maturity as a baker. When I was mucking around with 100% whole-wheat bread over a year ago, I was still experimenting with techniques and I could never be certain if I was doing it right. However, it was all those years of experimenting that was the most fruitful.

Bread is certainly a big subject and as I look back at my experiments in making malt, culturing wild yeasts, dabbling in homemade natural bread improvers, testing wheat and other exotic flours, playing with wood fired ovens, not to forget making homemade baking implements such as peels and proving rattan baskets, I realize that there are still many more challenges out there. 

The next few projects to try out will be the Tang Zhong method and making Poh Piah skins. I am really inspired by my  baking buddy whose talent and passion for the culinary arts is unmatched. Maybe I should do one more project since I am at it and that is to learn to make roti prata from scratch. The flipping should be fun to do.

Flour test - Kamut

I was given a bag of Kamut by a friend to test. I have read good things about Kamut and needless to say, I was very eager to see how it will turn out. As I was in the process of refreshing my sourdough starter, I decided to do some sourdough loaves with it. I did not follow any specific recipe of the masters but just made up one using my generic method. That was probably not very wise and to aggravate that, my wife announced that she had a dental appointment and that I had to send my daughter for a class. OMG.

Initially I wanted to make a rye starter since I had some leftovers taking up valuable freezer space. The initial build was with rye flour but I decided against using rye for the second build because I was afraid that it will compromise the evaluation of the Kamut. I ended up with a starter which was one-third rye at 100% hydration.

The main dough consisted of 25% Kamut with the rest consisting of Prima's Clover flour. I have always had problems with this flour and the recent batch that I got seemed to be at the higher end of the protein range. I keep telling myself that this was the last time that I was using this flour and I hope I remember this the next time I am at the distributor.

The Kamut had a pleasant nutty smell and it was relatively easy to handle the dough which was at 75%. The bread was baked at 220 deg for around 10 mins with the rest of the bake at 190 deg. The loaves smelt fantastic when they came out of the oven. As luck would have it, my friend happened to be on an errand near where I live and I was able to present two loaves to her.

The flavor of the bread was good although the crumb was a little moist when I first cut it a couple of hours later. However, this was characteristic of sourdough as this type of bread needs a day to set. The crumb was a little better when I ate it the next day. Unfortunately, I forgot to tell my friend about this and I guess I'd have to do better the next time. On the whole, the bread could have been a little better had I followed a proper recipe instead of making one up on the spot.

Flour Test - Shipton Mills Bread Flour

I was given a bag of Shipton Mills bread flour recently. It was a gift I appreciated greatly. Although it is 'just a bag of flour' you may say, it was certainly no ordinary bag of flour. Perhaps, more important than the exclusivity of the product, it is the token of the friendship it represents that mattered even more to me.

It was not the first time that I had tried Shipton mills flour. Another friend had given me a bag of Shipton mills wholewheat flour before but at that time, I did not have much luck with it. It was never documented because so many things went wrong that time, including a disaster with the camera.

Now that I have a chance to play with the Shipton mills flour again, I did the test with great reverance. The flour that I was given the last time was hand carried all the way from the UK. Even if this flour had been available in Singapore, I'd have to contemplate three times before I part with my limited 'dough'. My friend mentioned in passing that it was $18 a bag and that's a little too steep for me.

Using my standard test recipe for a white loaf, the flour weight was 40oz with 70% hydration. I used my lazy baker process for this test as I was expecting a plumber to relocate a pipe in the garden. The yeast used was only 1 teaspoon. Salt was 2%. The dough sat for about 12 hours in the fridge and this morning, it was given 2 folds before it was baked. During the folding, I noticed that the extensibility of the dough was markedly different from my regular flour.

The bread was baked for around 40 mins. The oven spring was outstanding and when I took them out from the oven, the crust crakled. After it had cooled, I ate a slice with butter and my conclusion is that it really is a great flour. The aroma was what I love in this kind of bread. I guess taste is something very personal and it is inevitable that different people have different tastes. However, I couldn't help feeling that those who prefer the sweet soft breads are missing out on something really good.

My verdict? The shipton mills flour is great and I'd surely use it more regularly if I had the extra money. For those who can afford it, it is worth every penny. After all, Dan Lepard and Linda Collister couldn't be wrong.