Mark Sinclair's Multigrain Bread
This is my first attempt at multigrain bread using an overnight "soaker" for the grain. These loaves are made from Mark Sinclair's recipe for Multigrain Bread, taken from his wedsite Back Home Bakery (under recipes). I followed his recipe except I used King Arthur's (KA) mixture of multigrain (total of 188 grams), which I recently purchased in one of my orders from KA. This bread is delicious. Thank you Mark for sharing this great recipe. The recipe produces 4 1/2 pounds of dough. I divided it into three 1 1/2 pound loaves and used 2 unlined brotforms and an unlined boule bannton for the loaves. I dusted the brotforms and banneton using a mixture of half KA AP flour and half rice flour. Incidentally, as you can see from this photo, I use a large plastic bin to cover the loaves during final proofing, which works well for me.
Brotforms after final proofing. At 1 hour final proofing time (75 deg. F) the loaves were ready for the oven.
The scoring needs practice but the loaves came out pretty well.
The crust was excellent and I was very pleased with the crumb and this bread tastes delicious. Again, thank you Mark for this terrific recipe.
Comments
I haven't delved into Reinhart's whole grain baking yet, but I will this fall. Your bread looks very good! I still don't have those forms because they're so expensive. But the rings they make are so nice. Is this a sourdough bread?
Jane
It's made with an overnight sponge and by soaking the seed mix overnight. If you're interested, here's a link to Mark's Back Home Bakery site for the recipe .
http://thebackhomebakery.com/
Howard - St. Augustine, FL
bakerincanada
I too liked the look of those loaves but the site no longer supplies recipes as they are now open for business!
When I posted the link I didn't know that the recipes had been removed from the Back Home Bakery website.
Peter Reinhart also has a recipe, which I haven't tried, but looks good. Reinhart's calls for a small amount of cooked brown rice and he uses all high gluten or bread flour, where Mark uses a "pate fermente", which in his recipe isn't "scrap dough" but rather more of an overnight sponge/poolish and he uses whole wheat and white AP flour mixed together for the dough.
Reinhart's is called Multigrain Bread Extroaordinaire and it can be found in Bread Baker's Apprentice on pages 187-189.
Howard - St. Augustine, FL
This is one I want to try very soon! I have to get some millet and I'm almost out of oats so I hope to get shopping soon. I know I could use something instead of the millet but I like millet. Great job Howard and I'm glad you liked thie taste. weavershouse
Appreciate your kind words. I really like the taste of this bread very much and Charlene is extremely happy about it and really likes it toasted. I had never done a multigrain "soaker" before and didn't know what to expect. I had avoided doing multigrain breads because the supermarket multigrain breads, even Pepperidge Farms and Arnold, taste like they have buckshot inbedded in the dough. Maybe all home baked multigrains are soft and delicious as a result of the overnight soaking of the grain, starting with pouring boiling water over the grain to soften it. If they're anything close to this one I'm sure sorry I waited so long to do it.
Hope all is well with you and yours.
Howard
Hi, Howard.
Those breads look really good.
I haven't made Mark's version or PR's, but I love Hamelman's 5-grain levain, which appears very similar to Mark's.
Jane, I think you got Hamelman's book. You did too, Howard.
The combination of a sourdough starter and a multi-grain and multi-seed soaker does incredible things to bread texture and flavor. I am with Charlene regarding the wonderfulness of this type of bread toasted. Add a shmear of home made almond butter and preserves. Mmmm .... I think I know what I'm having for breakfast tomorrow. I just happen to have a couple loaves of 5-grain levain in the freezer.
David
As you mentioned, I do have Hamelman's book and it's such a great book and a favorite. I'll try his 5-grain levain in the near future, thanks for the recommendation. Your suggestion of almond butter and preserves sounds delicious.
Howard - St. Augustine, FL
Yep, have it and am studying. I'll get around to doing that one very soon! Thanks for reminding me.
Jane
The crumb looks especially great. Nice work!
Cheers
FP
I started building two starters, whole wheat and white, last evening. Your miche looked so great that you inspired me to try it. I have an unopened bag of spelt in the fridge that I have been intending to use, so your posting gave me the nudge to do something with it. I only hope mine turns out half as nice as yours. You do great work.
Hope you post something on your sourdough experiments/testing. The exchange between you and David got me thinking about the sourness issue and how you lose some sourness with each refresh/build. Since I don't bake sourdough frequently (weekly or bi-weekly, not every day or so) I have to do a day or two of "refresh/build" to get the starter up to speed before baking, which dilutes some of the sourness. I'm not really caught up on having super sour sourdough, as I pesonally think sourness can mask some of the flavor. I really prefer using it for levening with a hint of sourness.
The only thing I can come up with to compensate for the loss of sourness/acid is, as you mentioned, retardation overnight in the fridge, to gain back some of the acid. Anyway, I'm still feeling my way along (maybe stumbling along would be a better characterization) with this sourdough technique. I think (emphasis on "think") I'm beginning to see a little light at the end of the tunnel, so to speak, re: the process and how it works. as I said I will be looking forward to the results of your on-going experiments/tests.
Howard - St. Augustine, FL
Nice job Howard! Sorry I'm late on this but I'm such a fan of multi grain soaker's and these are great looking. Glad to see you had such success.
Eric
I really appreciate your kind words. I'm new to multigrain and I'm kicking myself for waiting so long to try it. But, as the old saying goes, better late than never.
If you do any more testing on the Anis baguettes I would love to hear the results. I'm going to give them another try next week and see how it works out. Yours looked great. Mine spread a little, but that may have been "operator trouble". Like you, I used the KA French style flour and it seemed to work well. Incidentally, David did a great job of interpreting the recipe and I'm going to take his last posting and, as I said, give them another try. I think the minimal yeast and the 21 or so hours in retardation gives them good flavor. It's a completely different concept and technique than anything I've seen or tried in the past.
Thanks again,
Howard - St. Augustine, FL
Glad to see those loaves worked out well for you and that you enjoy the flavor so much. I'm not much of a hippie bread type, but I have to admit, I really enjoy this bread with brie and jalapeno jelly. For the record, if one of your blog readers would like to try the recipe, they can email me and I'll send it their way or you can do the same.
I'm doing some experimenting with the Anis baguettes as we speak, and I'll let you know how they work out. Batch #1 was OK; I've made a few adjustments for my equipment and style for batch #2 which is final proofing right now.
-Mark
http://thebackhomebakery.com
Do let us know your experience with Anis' baguettes. Your professional equipment's impact and your own take on this formula would be so interesting.
Jane's addition of some SD starter to the formula results in an even better tasting bread, in my opinion, BTW.
David
David,
I'm using your interpretation of the recipe as my guideline and just changing the handling a bit. Today's version came out better than round 1, and next should come out better. I appreciate your analytical approach to baking's nuances such as scoring; it makes it easier to approach my own techniques as well as the masters like Calvel.
Right now I'm doing a big workaround as far as equipment goes, using baguette pans (the perforated kind), and a non-steaming convection oven, but I think I'm close to as good as I'm going to get.
One big change, is it seemed too difficult to handle without degassing after 1 hour out of the fridge, so I'm going from the fridge to the bench and straight to final shape and couche. Next time I'll get some pix and detail it more.
-Mark
http://thebackhomebakery.com
Regarding my "analytic approach:" I'm delighted you find it useful. I've been a silent admirer or your instructional videos and advice. I must say that knowing what to do and being able to execute consistantly are by no means the same.
As you probably gathered, I had the same problem you describe handling the dough after 60 mnutes resting. As I understand it, the rest after pre-shaping is to relax the dough to make shaping easier. This dough was sooooooo relaxed it was like an over-cooked noodle. I was thinking along the same lines as you - Dividing and shaping right out of the retarder/refrigerator.
I did this with another baguette formula and felt the bread didn't fully expand or cook enough. Baguettes bake for such a short time. The cold dough never warmed up, and the crust was done. I'm thinking, if you divide and shape immediately, the proofing time might need to increase from 45 minutes to 60 or 75 minutes. What do you think?
David
On this last batch, I took it out of the fridge, dumped the whole mass of dough onto my floured table and spread it very lightly like you would to fold it, only not as much. Then I cut it into 4 lengths like you would ciabatta (since I was making 4 baguettes). I weighed them to see if I was close. At this point they were probably already 12"x4" or so. Then I just tucked them into themselves and rolled them out to 24". I put them in my couche for 1 hour, (my couche is on a pan that I slip iniside a plastic bag)then put them in my baguette pans and proofer for 30 minutes, uncovered with the humidity on low. Then scored and baked. So the final proof was 90 minutes if you want to call it that. I figure it took 45 just to get up to room temperature, then another 45 to get some growth. As you said, after 60 minutes of rest, it was way too loose to accomplish anything useful. The great thing about shaping it out of the fridge is if you use enough flour, it's quite easy to handle and easy to shape. Plus you can get a very clean shape and it only gets better as it rises in your couche.
I'll talk about it more once I make a post on it, so as not to clog up Howard's blog. Take it easy.
-Mark
http://thebackhomebakery.com
This bread is a true winner. I really like it very much, and Charlene puts it at the top of her list. She likes it both plain and toasted.
I was reluctant to give out any of your recipes without your permission, after finding out that you had removed them your website. Thanks for permission to pass this recipe on.
I am really glad you're experimenting with the Anis baguiettes and look forward to hearing about your results. I'm going to give them another try this week and see if I can do a little better than the last time. The technique is quite interesting and produces excellent flavor.
Howard
I'm hoping to post another thread on Anis' baguettes in the future. In response to David, above, I mentioned some of the changes I made. Although reluctant to post changes to a master's work, I think it's helpful to see how an adaption can be made with drastically different ingredients and equipment. Oh and something I didn't mention above is since I'm baking and scoring in baguette pans, I'm finding it easier to score them with them situated left to right instead of front to back.
-Mark
http://thebackhomebakery.com