Multigrain Bread Extraordinaire BBA # 20

This weekend I was supposed to be baking the marbled rye bread. Unfortunately, I have been unable to locate the white rye flour which is necessary for this bread. All rye flour was missing from Central Market's shelves. Interesting I thought. But none of the shelf markers were for white rye flour. I went to Sun Harvest and could find several types of rye flour, none of them the correct white flour. So I must place a King Arthur Flour order. Once I start an order, I find additional items in my basket. It is all so tempting. I imagine I will have to buy a lame. I have been using my exacto knife to score my breads, but once I am ordering, why not get the official french bread scoring knife. And then the brotforms call to me. Can I be a real bread baker without one? I have been able to resist their call so far.

So without the correct flour, I moved on the multigrain bread extraordinaire. From now on, I can say I made an extraordinaire bread, without bragging, just the facts. I have been waiting for this bread. I love multigrain bread. I have high hopes for the loaf.

Friday evening I made the soaker. I combined polenta, rolled oats, wheat bran with some water and left it on the counter for the evening. As my main stakeholder said, another science experiment on the counter.



Early in the morning, I made some brown rice in the oven. I think that making brown rice in the oven keeps it moist and requires little attention on the part of the cook. The flour, brown sugar, salt and and entire tablespoon of yeast went into the mixer. Then the soaker, brown rice, honey, buttermilk and water were added. We were supposed to sprinkle in some flour if we needed it to make a dough that was not sticky. I actually ladled in flour. Eventually I got a delightful soft and pliable ball. I really enjoyed kneading it and feeling the little pokey things in the dough. I think that the polenta may still have been a little hard. It was an interesting textural experience.

The dough was fermented at room temperature for 90 minutes. At this point, I realized that I would need to find some other ways to occupy my time this weekend.

I am the mother of two young adults on the other side of the country and one remaining teenager at home. I get snippets of information into their lives. I find the snippets sometimes annoy me, but I would rather have some information, than no information. I have four older brothers. There have not been so many years between the time when I was in college and now that I have completely forgotten how snippets are delivered. Snippets are almost always delivered in the least upsetting fashion, not misinformation, just partial information. This mornings snippet was from my rock climber. I'm on my way to a state park in WV to do a little climbing, I'm all caught up on my classes. The last time he did a little climbing, he posted pictures.




I had a few questions when I saw the picture. How high are you? Who put in the things that hold the rope? Did they get a good night's sleep? Had they been drinking? Did they eat a healthy breakfast? Why are you doing this? Why don't you have on a shirt? Do you need us to buy you a shirt?

It is fall in Pennsylvania. One of my brothers told me that he had put on a flannel shirt the other day. We don't wear flannel in Texas. The temperature has dipped into the 90s here. I miss fall in Pennsylvania. I miss frost and the changing tree colors. I might even miss scrapple . Scrapple is hog offal. I was eating offal before it was in. I miss blue hubbard squash. I saw squash in our local grocery store, they had the hubbards in the ornamental section. For $2/pound, for squash.

Back to the bread. My polenta was a coarse ground polenta. I could feel it when I kneaded it. You could see it when the bread was finished. Next time, I will use a finer polenta. And there will be a next time, this is indeed an extraordinaire bread. It may be my favorite bread so far.