April 14, 2020 - 7:42pm
Today’s red fife loaf
Today’s red fife loaf. I dropped the hydration a bit from the recent loaves. The past few loaves have been tending to relax a lot while in proofing and flattening out bit. So I brought the hydration down a bit from 78% to 75%. Added a small amount of olive oil for flavor.
Very good wholewheat flavor with malty notes. Soft crumb - not at all chewy. I’m getting the hang of this grain, which is weaker than the northern red spring wheat I usually use. Could have proofed a bit longer, but not bad for 100% wholegrain.
Share
Comments
That looks really great for 100% Whole Red Fife.
Benny
What a nice looking WW loaf!
I love red fife, but have only used it in small amounts in recipes. I also have the white red fife flour which I prefer. How long did this need for proofing? Breadtopia has a recipe for 100% and 40% red fife which I'm debating about using.
Nice looking bread.
Sharon
Hi Sharon,
By "white red fife" do you mean bran removed? I don't have experience with that, and my comments based on whole grain might not apply. With that YMMV remark, this bread was made with the steps below. I notice red fife is 'weaker' than hard spring wheat (my usual grain), and really breaks down fast if overproofed. So I've gone with using a small amount of starter and fermenting slowly. If you use a proofer, the times should be much shorter - you'll have to experiment.
-Sumi
1) Build/activate levain any way you do so it's bubbly at step 2
2) Mix 400 gr whole red fife flour, 300 gr water, 40 gr levain, 8 gr salt
3) Rest 30-60 min
4) knead to medium development ('til extensible, but not thin windowpane)
5) Cover, bulk ferment overnight (9 hrs, cool kitchen ~65 deg F)
6) pre-shape loosely, rest 30 min
7) shape, put in proofing cloth, proof for 3 hrs (daytime cool room temp ~70 deg F)
8) Bake at 425, with steam 20 min, and 20 more min after venting oven
Hi Sumi,
yes the white red fife has the bran removed. Not sure how that will affect your recipe vs whole red fife. This has been helpful because I wasn’t sure how strong red fife was. I’m thinking I might not be brave enough to try 100% red fife. How does it compare to kamut in terms of strength. Breadtopia’s recipe for kamut and red fife are the same in terms of bulk fermentation and proofing. Would this benefit from an overnight retard?
Thank you so much.
Sharon
Hi Sharon,
To make a white red fife loaf, i would just drop the hydration to 65% ( so 260 gr water for 400 gr flour in the above). Whole grain bread needs quite a bit of moisture because the bran absorbs and holds it. It’s not *that* weak - in fact it makes very nice soft bread (like a French or Italian flour). Why not try the Breadtopia recipe ( maybe scaled down to a miniloaf to experiment).
On retarding- I say no to retard if you’re making sourdough with this, yes to retard if it’s commercial yeast.
It’s much easier to deal with than kamut. Kamut tastes good, but it’s trouble to bake with as the primary flour in a bread. It takes presoaking etc. Red fife you can treat like slightly delicate all purpose flour.
Go forth and experiment! It’s just bread :-)
Sumi