Leeloo Dallas Mul-ti-grain

This week’s bread was a beautiful looking multi-grain. I was looking forward to this one as there was a call for things like wheat bran, millet, rolled oats, buckwheat and quinoa. Many of those ingredients were much like a choose your own adventure, except in this case when you turn to page 32 you get a delicious bread and not eaten by a dragon.

I have adapted some of the previous techniques this week to aid with the loaf development. The dough started with a soaker, where the night before I soaked the polenta, wheat bran and buckwheat in water. I chose buckwheat only because I haven’t worked with it before. The polenta used the same method as the Anadama bread, so I knew it had to soak for a long time to get the corn soft. What was unique about this bread was after using the indirect dough is that it also called for some cooked brown rice. The rice I am sure was used for the extra starch to offset the fiber from the other types of wheat introduced.

With the use of brown sugar and honey, this bread colored up very nicely and I am told will make a great toast. Being an enriched dough it of course called for fat, this time in the form of butter milk. Since I didn’t have any buttermilk I had to use the old method of skim milk and lemon juice to get the fat out.

Next week: Pain a l’Ancienne (don’t ask I have no idea what that is)