Are you team Jacob or Breadward?

This is a very ugly loaf. I am not proud of this loaf. But I learned from this loaf, so it’s okay.

I made two levains around nine am and put them in the heating mat to get it going by the afternoon. I roll up the sides of the heating mat to make a heating tunnel, which has been quite successful. Then at six am the next morning I realized that I had forgotten the levain. I was not ready to wake up so I went back to sleep and checked the levain at eight am, giving it 23 hours at 80 degrees. It was liquid. Pourable. I decided I wanted to see what kind of bread this severely over fermented levain would give me. I was rewarded with bread pancakes.

I made two loaves, one “normal” loaf with 40% whole wheat and 60% bread flour, and another loaf a 50 / 50 split spelt and rye flour.

The normal loaf I did the same as before, but let’s review. One hour autolyse; then Rubaud, giving it a good mix for five minutes resting for 15 then another 5 of mixing; fold every half hour or so for a while until the dough is ready; turn and fold; put in a banneton and final proof; bake at 475 (pre-heated to 515) 30 minutes top on, 30 minutes top off. Bread.

In this case, I could tell something was wrong, well immediately, but mostly during the turn and fold. I tried doing the turn and fold without any flour and was mostly successful but the dough was so slack it was almost liquid. For the final proof I kept it an hour at room temp, and when I transferred it to the parchment paper (despite my commitment to cornmeal I went with parchment paper here) the dough flattened immediately. I scored it and prayed for a rise but received little to none. I ate some and it’s bread, but this loaf is destined to be bread crumbs. There are worse fates.

For the spelt loaf, immediately after mixing it I realized that a “rye” loaf is generally fractionally rye flour, not earnestly. So I made a 50% rye loaf. I auto-lysed it for an hour, which Rin informed me could have gone much longer, spelt and rye can be auto-lysed for 24 hours even. Knowledge for next time. I made the dough, let it bulk prove for six hours and came back to a mess that had the consistency of a pile of wet sand. I decided to mix it with the Rubaud method and that gave it some texture, so I waited another two hours, at which point it was still more like wet sand than dough, but I set it on a piece of parchment paper and baked it. Nobody was proud of it.

These loaves were made with yeast that was over spent and tired, resulting in a loaf that even when “proved” lacked significant air bubbles.

Normal Loaf
Dough
300 g bread flour (Central Milling Brand Organic)
200 g whole wheat flour (King Arthur Brand Organic)
400 g h2o
80% hydration
10 g salt

Levain
10 g starter
50 g all purpose flour (King Arthur Brand Organic)
50 g water

Spelt / Rye Loaf
Dough
250 g spelt flour
250 g rye flour
400 g h2o
80% hydration
10 g salt
5 g Instant Yeast

Levain
10 g starter
50 g rye flour
50 g water

What I did right:
Not much, I’ll have breadcrumbs.
What I did wrong:
So much.
What I learned:
Don’t use exhausted levain.