Catch up: Rye porridge bread and maize bread

This is a catch-up post about bread baked on 9th February which has been hanging about a couple of weeks waiting for editing.

Maize bread

The first bread I baked this week was a Pan de Mais using the straight dough recipe from 'The Handmade Loaf'. The loaf contains both maize flour and precooked polenta. The recipe requires buttermilk which I substituted with milk and half a tablespoon of vinegar stirred together and left for 15 minutes. My precooked polenta (50g) was cooked with 200g of water rather than 100g. This was a silly mistake, as I placed 100g of water on the polenta while stirring the milk and found it was absorbed before I got a chance to heat up the mixture!

The dough turned out to soft and extremely sticky, so I added enough extra flour to make it soft and fluffy. During the folds the dough seemed to turn into a giant bright yellow marshmallow… I was doubtful that that was a good thing but blindly continued, hoping for the best but fearing the worst. This dough raised extremely quickly! By the time the dutch oven had preheated the dough was precariously spilling out of the banneton and wobbling like a giant blancmange. The dough deflated a tiny bit on scoring but bounced back a little in the oven – crisis averted.

This bread was a real treat. It smells enticing and has a beautiful creamy soft crumb. I used this bread to make some grilled cheese sandwiches inspired by Jamie Olivers recipe. Amazing!

Rye porridge bread

Secondly, I baked Rye porridge bread using the last of the rye chops in the cupboard. This is one of the first breads from Tartine #3 that I got acceptable results from. I've tried quite a few variations with varying degrees of success, with and without extra rye flour, pre-fermented rye chops extra molasses, extra bread spices, extra walnuts are all viable and delicious options. However, on this occasion I decided to go back to basics and just bake the recipe exactly as in Tartine #3.

That includes reducing the amount of leaven back down to 15%. My loaves have had limited oven spring recently and rather than get up earlier or mix the dough later on in the evening I thought I'd just try retarding the shaped loaves a bit longer (about 18 hours). I'm pleased with the outcome.

Happy Baking!