Farine

Please don’t think that I am already responding to the challenge I set for myself here yesterday, i.e. that I already read the introduction to Reinhart’s Whole Grain Breads (all 75 pages of them) and learned to master the master formula. I haven’t moved one iota in that direction yet.
No, this mash bread is the product of two preferments which were already alive in my kitchen as I was writing that other post, both whole wheat: a mash and a levain. I had made both before I even thought of challenging myself. Actually I challenged myself because I made them both.
See, I must be a rebel at heart (at least that’s what the headmistress – who was a nun – told my Dad when she made him come and pick me up from school right in the middle of a workday because I had kicked her in the shin. Of course she didn’t tell him that she had slapped me first and when my Dad heard that, he said he understood and had often felt like kicking her himself but to please not do it again. I was 9 when it happened and to this day, I have never kicked a nun again, so I can’t be that much of a rebel).
Anyway to come back to these preferments, I was a bit stressed out by Reinhart’s instructions about sticking the mash in and out of the oven to keep it at the right temperature and I just didn’t feel like doing it.
Then I remembered that Baggett’s mash making method in Kneadlessly Simple was actually just that… quite simple: it involved pouring boiling water over the whole wheat flour just as Reinhart says to but after that, just to put the bowl in the microwave next to a cup of hot water, to wait 15 minutes and microwave on High for 1 minute, then wait 30 minutes and do it again, and then that was it. You could let the mash do what it had to do without having to worry about it.
But I was mixing her method and his method and even though it was simpler, it was also very confusing and that’s when I decided that enough was enough, I had to read the book and understand the whys and why nots of Reinhart’s technique and take it from there.
However I had my two preferments and they both looked fine. I put them in the fridge overnight so that they wouldn’t get carried away while I was sleeping and two hours after I took them out this morning, they were at room temperature and ready to go to work.
So I took out the book, opened it to page 199 without even glancing at the introduction and set out to read the recipe/formula.
I was astounded right off the bat because, get this, there was NO mention of water. Mash, levain, whole wheat flour, instant yeast, salt and oil or butter (honey or agave nectar or sugar too but it’s optional and I optioned it out) and NO water, which meant that, either the mash and the levain were watery enough for the amount of flour indicated or Reinhart had had a senior moment and completely forgotten about hydration or he had invented a new breadmaking technique that didn’t require any water and I didn’t know about it since I hadn’t read the introduction.
Well, now was not the time to find out. I decided to wing it. Just to be on the safe side, I put a cup of water on standby next to the mixer and proceeded as instructed.
But the dough didn’t need more water. It actually needed more flour! And Reinhart says that, yes, sometimes you have to add water and sometimes you have to add flour, and it’s okay! So I added away. Altogether I added 94 g of whole wheat flour to the 255 g already in the formula.

That’s a lot! But that’s the only way I could think of to eventually get a mash bread and not dozens and dozens of mash silver pancakes because that dough looked like a batter for the longest time, I kid you not. All of a sudden however it decided to stop joking around and settled down to business and it became beautifully soft, smooth and elastic.
It actually became so pleasant to work with that I got second thoughts about reading the book. Don’t they say that too much knowledge can be dangerous?

Ingredients:
For the mash

• 300 g water 
• 120 g whole wheat flour 
• 1 g diastatic malt powder 

For the levain

• 64 g mature whole wheat starter
• 191 g whole wheat flour
• 142 g water at room temperature 

For the final dough

• 398 g starter (i.e. all of it)
• 397 g mash (i.e. all of it)
• 255 g whole wheat flour + 94 g (see above)
• 8.5 g salt
• 7 g instant yeast
• 14 g almond oil (you can also use melted butter or vegetable oil and it is optional but I chose to put it in because it helps the bread stay fresh longer) 
• extra whole wheat flour for adjustments 

Method:
Please note that I am describing what I did, not necessarily what Reinhart says to do. Also note that I used a stand mixer but that the dough can be kneaded by hand.

For the mash

1. Set water to boil
2. When it boils, pour it over the flour and the malt. Mix briefly and set in the microwave oven next to a cup of hot water
3. Fifteen minutes later, microwave on High for one minute without opening the microvave oven. Repeat after 30 minutes and leave to cool in the microwave
4. When cool and after 3 hours at room temperature, you can either refrigerate it until you are ready to use it or leave it out overnight if you plan to use it within the next 24 hours. (I left it out for about 12 hours, then I put it in the fridge)

For the levain

1. Mix all the ingredients together in a bowl to form a ball of dough. Using wet hands, knead in the bowl for about 2 minutes until the ingredients are evenly distributed and the flour is hydrated. Let rest 5 minutes and knead again with wet hands for one minute. The dough will be tacky
2. Transfer to a clean bowl, cover losely with plastic wrap and leave at room temperature for 4 to 6 hours until nearly doubled in size (Reinhart warns it can take 8 hours or longer)
3. When the levain is fully developed, knead it for a few seconds to degas it. It is then ready for use but if necessary to coordinate the timing with the mash, cover tightly with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight. Remove from the fridge two hours before mixing the dough (in my case, it stayed out pretty much the whole day then went in the fridge together with the mash)

For the final dough

1. Using a metal pastry scraper, chop the starter into 12 smaller pieces
2. Put the pieces and all the other ingredients except the extra flour into the mixer with the paddle attachment and mix on slow speed for 1 minute
3. Switch to the dough hook and mix on medium-low speed, occasionally scraping down the bowl for 2 or 3 minutes until the pre-doughs become more cohesive and assimilated into each other. Add more flour or water as needed until the dough is soft and slightly sticky (that’s where I started to add the first of the extra 94 g)
4. Dust a work surface with flour, take the dough out of the mixer and roll it into the flour to coat and knead for 3 to 4 minutes by hand, incorporating only as much flour as needed (yeah! right) until the dough feels soft and tacky but not sticky
5. Form into a ball and let rest for 5 minutes
6. Lightly oil a bowl or dough bucket
7. Resume kneading for 1 minute and make the final flour adjustment. The dough should pass the windowpane test. (Well, mine didn’t! Not by a long shot. It ripped like crazy, so forget about hand mixing, I threw it back into the mixer and went at it, on medium-low, for as many minutes as it needed to pass the windowpane test and it took a while and I did have to add flour – although it set my teeth on edge because that’s exactly what I hate do do and I hadn’t added any water so why was the dough SOOOOOOO wet?, but I went on mixing and I went on adding flour until I had added in a total of 94 g and that must have been the magic number because all of a sudden the dough started behaving and passed the windowpane test with flying colors and I was in baking heaven)
8. Form into a ball and place in the prepared bowl, rolling to coat with oil
9. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rise at room temperature for approximately 45 to 60 minutes, until it is about 1 1/2 its original size
10. Transfer to a lightly floured surface and loosely form into a batard
11. Let rest for 15 minutes and form into a tighter batard
12. Place on a sheet pan lined with parchment paper and dusted with flour (I used a mixture of bran and semolina as it works fine for me)
13. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rise at room temperature for approximately 45 to 60 minutes, until it has grown to 1 1/2 time its original size
14. Preheat the oven to 425 F/218 C after putting in it a baking stone and an empty metal pan
15. When dough is ready to bake, score it (for whole grains it is best to score at a 90-degree angle to the sides of the loaf), pour a cup of water into the metal pan, lower the temperature of the oven to 350 F/177 C (I have an issue with that as I think it’s way too low. I actually would have liked the loaf to come out of the oven a little bit browner and ruddier, so next time, I’ll shoot for 380 F/193 C from the get go)
16. Rotate the loaf 180 degrees and continue baking for another 20 to 30 minutes until the loaf is rich brown on all sides, sounds hollow when tapped on the bottom and registers at least 200 F/93 C in the center (as it wasn’t brown enough, I increased the oven temperature to 380 F/193 C and added 10 minutes to the baking time)
17. Transfer to a cooling rack and allow to cool for at least 2 hours before serving and longer if possible.

Reinhart says that mash breads tend to taste better after they have fully cooled, and up to one or two days after they come out of the oven (store them in aluminum foil or a paper bag).

So I left the mash bread to cool all evening and all night and I sliced it open for breakfast this morning. Here is what the bread should look like according to Reinhart (I scanned the image from the book) …

…and here is what mine looks like:

This loaf has been submitted to Susan, from Wild Yeast, for her weekly Yeastpotting feature.