Baking Multiple Kinds of Breads at Once

The tools of the trade were all on deck Saturday when I was making three kinds of bread at once. Left to right in the front row are a bowl of starter with recently added flour, a recently mixed bowl of rye starter (Danish dough whisk still present), the smooth caramel top of a whole wheat, spelt bread on its final rise, a small bowl of freshly milled rye flour, and a mason jar of rye sourdough starter. In the middle row are two jars and a bag of whole grains. In the back are more flours and second from right my grain mill.

Making three kinds of bread requires the additional skill of tracking. Each dough, of course, requires different ingredients, but they have to be kneaded differently, raised for different lengths of time, stretched and folded at varying intervals over 24 - 36 hours, baked at different temperatures and put into the oven when they are ready. Knowing when to bake a sourdough bread depends a whole lot more on experience than it does for a yeast bread. One reason displaced sourdough is its predictability. Yeasted breads can be baked according to a clock, i.e., raise for 90 minutes, punch down, raise again for 60 minutes. Bake.

The first one out was the whole wheat and spelt. I'll write more about this one when I get it to perform the way I want, but suffice to say, the flavor was so rich it was almost cocoa-like. It was a little gummier than I hoped and its oven spring nearly ripped its top off, but this one is going to get another try.

That's the whole wheat and spelt in the back, a Danish Rugbrod in the center, and a Frisian (Dutch) rye in front.

I'm proud of that Rugbrod.

That's more than two and a half pounds of nearly solid rye and wheat kernels, flax and sunflower seeds, and enough rye starter to hold it together after it has baked for nearly two hours.