?? Re: Dark Sour Bread by Bernard Clayton

[Varaile]

I tried doing a search, but between my hypersenstive touch pad and the numerous bread threads it pulled up I got frustrated. Sometimes direct is best.

First, has anyone made this bread? Dark Sour Bread from New Complete Book of Breads , pg 101.

It seems as if there is a typo in it somewhere, or else we had "user error".

The problem came in with Step 2 (below). The Husband ended up with a bowl full of glop, not a "heavy and unresponsive dough" as described. He had to add AT LEAST and additional 1 1/2 cups of flour just to get it to form into a kneadable ball.

We were also wondering if the bran ceral should have been crushed or pulverized before adding?

So, has anyone made this and experieced these problems?

Thanks for any light you can shed on this.



__________________________________________________ _
Dark Sour Bread
2 c flat beer
1/2 c H20
2/3 c cornmeal
2 tbsp butter
2 tsp salt
1/2 c molasses
2 pkg dry yeast
1/2 c each wheat germ and whole-wheat bran cereal
1 1/2 c ww flour
1 c AP or bread flour

1) In a saucepan, bring beer to a simmer. Add the H20, Remove from the heat and stir in cornmeal, butter, salt and molasses. When it has cooled to 105-115*, add the yeast and stir to dissolve.

2) Stir in wheat germ, bran cereal, ww flour. Stir together with a wooden spoon. Dough will be heavy and unresponsive. Add white flour, a small portion at a time and work it in with your fingers and a dough blade. (Dough is too heavy for an electric mixer - hook will just spin futilely in the air.)

3) Continue to kneed and work dough by hand, adding white flour if necessary to control stickiness for about 8-10 minutes.

4) Drop dough into mixing bowl, cover and let rise 2 hours or until doubled in size.

5) Shape into baguettes or round loves. Your preference.

6) Cover and let rise 1 1/2 hours.

7) Bake 40 minutes at 350* or until loaves are crusty and almost black in color.

8) Cool.

[ljt2r]

I have not made that bread but I checked my 2003 ed and it says the same thing (ingredients and instructions are the same). Good luck--I hate it when that happens!

[mkc]

I haven't made the bread, but have the book and checked (in mine it's on pg. 128 so a different revision than yours) and the recipe is exactly the same as you posted.

2 1/2 cups of liquid (not including the molasses) is AWFULLY high hydration for 3 1/2 cups of wheat product. By bakers' percentages (weight based) that's roughly 20 ounces of liquid and 16 ounces of "flour", that's 125% hydration!

Typical bread dough hydration is in the 65 to 75 percent range (the upper end being the no-knead doughs), so for 20 ounces of liquid you'd need to have roughly 27 to 31 ounces (by weight) of wheat product. That's an extra roughly 2 1/2 to 3 cups of flour, in addition to what's already in the recipe (if I did my conversions correctly).

Or for 16 ounces of flour you want somewhere between 1 1/4 and 1 1/2 total cups of liquid (definitely not twice that!)

It probably doesn't help much except to confirm that there seems to be a problem with the recipe and not your technique.

Michelle

[hAndyman]

I always wonder if I screwed up a recipe if I have issues with one (as that's likely and becoming moreso). I've no experience with that recipe but do wonder if The Husband possibly forgot the cornmeal? Or maybe he used 2 bottles of beer? The cornmeal would absorb quite a bit of liquid and the bran and wheat germ would absorb some, but it still seems that there may be an issue with the amount of liquid if the recipe was indeed followed as written.
I checked online and only found a single reference to *Clayton's Dark Sour Bread here* and they had liquid issues too, though they were using a sponge with it as it's a differing version of his bread.
Anyways thanks for the recipe - I may try it unless someone else reports that they also had issues similar to what you folks had.

[Varaile]

Thanks for the quick replies! I'm glad to hear it probably wasn't us.

Much to our surprise, the bread turned out really good. I had my doubts when I saw the bowl of glop, but DH just kept adding flour till he had a workable dough. I doubled checked with DH and he said he didn't skip anything.

I noted the changes below in bold:

Dark Sour Bread
Bernard Clayton


2 c flat beer
1/2 c H20
2/3 c cornmeal
2 tbsp butter
2 tsp salt
1/2 c molasses
2 pkg dry yeast
1/2 c each wheat germ and whole-wheat bran cereal
1 1/2 c ww flour (2 c ww flour)
1 c AP or bread flour (2+ c AP or bread; additional for kneading)

1) In a saucepan, bring beer to a simmer. Add the H20, Remove from the heat and stir in cornmeal, butter, salt and molasses. When it has cooled to 105-115*, add the yeast and stir to dissolve.

2) Stir in wheat germ, bran cereal, ww flour. Stir together with a wooden spoon. Dough will be heavy and unresponsive. Add white flour, a small portion at a time and work it in with your fingers and a dough blade. (Dough is too heavy for an electric mixer - hook will just spin futilely in the air.)

3) Continue to kneed and work dough by hand, adding white flour if necessary to control stickiness for about 8-10 minutes.

4) Drop dough into (greased) mixing bowl, cover and let rise 2 hours (1 hr 15 min) or until doubled in size.

5) Shape into baguettes or round loves. Your preference. Place on cookie sheet with parchment paper sprinkled with cornmeal.

6) Cover and let rise 1 1/2 hours. (1 hr 15 min)

7) Bake 35-40 minutes at 350* or until loaves are crusty and almost black in color. (Bread was chocolate in color)

8) Cool.


We used Fiber One cereal (maybe should have crushed it?), AP flour, and Lienenkugels Fireside Nut Brown beer. I think this might have done fine in the electric mixer, expecially since it was so runny intially that it would have made it easier to add the flour.