Family baking for state level bread assessment

Today there was a state level assessment and this time there were three family members attending this competition besides me: my daughter, my granddaughter and my wife, so four breads were thrown into the fight for best scores.

Last year I had very negative experience because my kamut sourdough bread was assessed really badly with the main reason that it was too sour and the committee could not find the typical kamut flavor in it. The only bread that passed really well was my daughter's wheat wholegrain bread that got gold award.  

Since then I was experimenting with different approaches how to prepare my bread less sour. The best option I found was a combination of  yeast water and SD. So I decided that for this year I will use my sage yeast water and my regular SD starter which I feed with white AP flour.

On two previous assessments my SD seeded porridge bread was very well assessed so there was no need to create a new recipe. For the rest of my family members we decided according to their preferences: my wife won last year one assessment  with 30% wholegrain bread, my daughter got gold award last year for wheat wholegrain bread and therefore there was no need to invent something new. The only "problem" was the idea for my granddaughter who had no history so far. She liked very much my multi grain bread so I proposed her this as an idea and she accepted that.

For me and my wife the schedule was easy as we are at home, but my daughter was working and granddaughter at age of 11 years and half was whole day in school and had a late afternoon session playing trumpet. Therefore me an my wife started early in the morning with plan to retard and bake late in the evening together with others.

My daughter and granddaughter started at 5PM so there was no chance for retarding due to the rule that the bread should be baked at least 8 hours before assessment.

For all four breads the ratio of YW preferment versus SD levain was 2:1. Actually this meant 200g YW preferment and 100g SD levain. The total amount of flour including pre-fermented is limited to 1000g. For the preferment I used AP flour, while the rest of flour was strong bread flour type 850 with 13% gluten. The mixture of whole grain flour was 25% wholegrain wheat and 5% wholegrain rye. For less opened and more even crumb I have chosen 5% lower hydration at 73%, for wholegrain bread the hydration was around 86%. The overall hydration for my seeded bread with porridge was over 100% (all water is included in the calculation).

All four breads got gold awards any my bread ended at second place according to absolute number of points.

My greatest pleasure was baking again with my 11 years old granddaughter. The fact that she got gold award for hear bread was just an add on to my happiness. I helped her with a lot of tips but at the end the bread was really prepared by herself. I think that tomorrow at the official ceremony I will be just floating above the floor.

 All three participating ladies and a small "she" dog in the lap of my wife. 

The crumb shots will follow as I have to wait until tomorrow to see the breads at the exhibition. (see my post below)

Happy baking!

Joze