Words are funny. When I picture a “multigrain” bread I think of something brown, made with whole wheat flour. This loaf, however, is made entirely of white bread flour, but incorporates whole grains and seeds. Surprise!
The night before baking I weighed out my grains and seeds and set them to soak. I used 20 grams each of poppy seeds, quinoa, and Old Fashioned oats, and 25 grams of rye grain (I used my grain mill on the largest setting to crack the grain).
The next morning I prepared my mise en place. Other than the soaked grains, this bread is extremely simple: just flour, water, salt, and yeast.
Per the instructions, I mixed all the ingredients together, then kneaded the dough (I kneaded by hand for 4 minutes). I still find it difficult to gauge when I have kneaded enough since a dough that is “smooth and elastic” is rather subjective, so I try to err on the side of too much kneading rather than too little.
After the dough had risen for an hour I divided it in two and preshaped shaped it.
I let the loaves rest for 15 minutes, then did the final shaping.
I let the loaves rise for an additional 45 minutes before baking. When I took the covers off them to put them in the oven I noticed that they had risen sideways instead of up, which was concerning.
But there wasn’t much to do except bake them, so I scored them (the dough was quite wet and didn’t want to score nicely), put them in the oven, and crossed my fingers.
Since I had two free-form loaves, I once again decided to test the impact of my baking cloche on the bread.
I removed the lid of the cloche after 15 minutes of baking and found that both loves had risen very little, and that the loaf inside the cloche seemed to have spread outward a little more, possibly because of the extra steam generated within the cloche chamber.
I finished the bake, but wasn’t very happy with these “long and short” loaves.
The bread tasted quite good, so I decided to try again, this time baking the bread in loaf pans.
I am much happier with the bread in this shape, although I did still notice that the dough rose outward to fill the pan before it started climbing up, and I was a little disappointed that the oven spring was so little. This bread is quite tasty, and I can definitely see myself making it again.
Until the next time: may your yeast always rise and your flour never run out.
A Baker's Education 