#27 Power Bread

If we don't worry about variations and choosing only one of a set (like the last choice with rye), this bread marks the halfway point in the challenge. Overall, this is a bit different from previous loaves. I wasn't quite sure what to make of a power loaf. The connotations, for me at least, are of a heavy, calorie laden bread—not something that is very appealing. The loaf is also a bit unusual in that it has a pre-soaker as well as a soaker and biga. This stretches the recipe out to three days.

Options were for a loaf or rolls (or bars). I cut the recipe in half and made a half-dozen rolls. Since the rolls have an egg-glaze, I skipped steaming the oven with no obvious ill effects. Overall, the taste was a bit unusual but not bad. These weren't particularly heavy, I'm please to report. But I would strongly suggest toasting and eating these with butter.

#26 45% Rye Bread

The next bread in the challenge is the choice among "Three Rye Hearth Bread Variations" as Reinhart puts it. We were given the choice of a 45% rye, 68% rye, and a 100% rye. Frankly, it seems a little like cheating to only be making one of the three if our goal is to work our way through the book. Still, since I'm not overly fond of rye breads, for now I'll stick to a single loaf. Perhaps I'll come back to the other two later.

My choice was the loaf with the smallest rye content. This is closer to what I prefer and, with the reduced rye content, a much easier loaf to make. I made the recipe pretty much as given. There is an option of adding caraway, nigella, anise seeds or dried mince onions. I went with the latter and regretted it. I really didn't like the aroma of the bread. Had I to do it over, I would have omitted all the optional additions.

I chose a log-shaped loaf and played with another type of scoring that I've often seen on small rye loaves. Overall, a pleasant loaf.

#25 High Extraction Flour Miche

For this recipe, I cut things in half making one small miche. Not having high extraction flour, I followed Reinhart's suggestion and used a mixture of whole wheat and bread flours. The dough was a bit slack, as can be seen in the pictures that accompany the recipe in Reinghart's book. But apart from that, there were no problems with the recipe. This was a fairly ordinary loaf similar to may other whole wheat loaves.

#24 Multigrain Hearth Bread

This was a nice, pleasant, but fairly unremarkable bread. For this recipe, I used cooked Quaker's Multi Grain cereal. This was a mistake as it was too wet. To adjust, I cut back the recommended water to 100 grams and made up the difference with King Arthur Harvest Grain blend. This was still much wetter that most of Reinhart's soakers so I had to make some adjustments with additional flour for the final dough.

That said, the combination of cereals gave me a wide range of flavors. And with the adjustments, the dough behaved nicely. The oven-spring was a bit weak but okay. I played with a new scoring pattern that I think worked well.

Overall, the bread was a bit dense, but fine. On the other hand, it isn't a loaf I'll be in a hurry to get back to.