Bread Log 8: Beer Bread with Roasted Barley . . . and BEER!

I realize that the word is in the title, but it bears emphasis.

I knew going into this recipe that I would have to make one adjustment, substituting plain ol'e hulled barley for the asked for malted barley.  In the context of grains, malting refers to the process of soaking the grain till it germinates, then drying it to arrest the growing process. It develops enzymes which modify the grain's starches into sugars.

While finding malted barley is simple enough (you can get it from most home brew stores) it is hard to find it A) husked, something which doesn't matter for brewing, but definitely does for eating, and B) only lightly roasted.  It was the latter which prevented me from getting my hands on some in this case, as the only husked malted barley I could find was heavily roasted, and would have thus imparted a more bitter flavor.  Here is what I wound up with:
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As you see it here it would have required a process similar to what I did with the rye berries for the Sunflower Seed Bread in order to not chip a tooth.  However in place of that process the recipe asks for the grains to be ground, and lacking a sufficient grinder I used the next best thing:
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This is my mortar and pestle, Enrique the Crusher . . . I'm still working on the name.  By grinding down the grain, it allows it to hydrate more quickly in the context of the bake itself, though in retrospect I might have given it a bit of a soak before hand regardless.

When it came time to bake Whit found me working diligently in the kitchen . . .
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What, you can't expect the bread to get beer and not share!

 Actually, in this case the beer got 11ounces, so all I got were the dregs.  Still a decent way to start a bake.















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The mix itself went pretty decently.  Because I recognized the grind on the barley was a bit more coarse than was ideal I added an autolyse to help soften it up before the mix proper.  That is fine in a hypothetical sense, but because the poolish preferment constituted such a high percentage of the water the benefit was negligible.  What's more the relative stiffness of the autolysed dough compared to the poolish slowed down the incorporation step and helped contribute to an overly warm final dough temp.

I corrected as best I could by adjusting the bulk fermentation and bench proof times.  And the final results were pretty impressive!
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I chose to make 4 small loaves and one large one.  As I have been having problems recently with good volume in my finished loaves I decided to play with the slashes.  They are all within a quarter ounce of one another, and I slashed each one a different number of times at roughly the same depth.  I expected the single slash to be in sufficient, causing an overly dense loaf, and the four slash to be excessive resulting in a flat loaf, with the two in the middle being about right.



Here is what I got:

All four of them expanded so substantially they either ripped the slashes or found their own ways to grow.

 I wasn't incorrect in one sense.  The single slash loaf (on the left in this picture) was the smallest of the lot.  The slash obviously hardened before it had finished expanding and to relieve the internal pressure it expanded from the weakest point, the side closest to another loaf.

However, even the one with four slashes wasn't satisfied.  You can see it ripped the the left most slash all the way down the base.










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In spite of them not turning out perfectly it was such a nice change of pace from the slightly flatter loaves as of late that I couldn't have been happier.  That is until I took the large loaf, a batard, out of the oven.
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Here it is pre-bake.  I did a single slash along its length with a curved lame.
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Here it is after.  You can really see where the slash expanded, and it made probably the best ear I have ever made on a loaf at home.
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Here is an up close and personal shot of the loaf.
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A shot from the side, to give you a sense for the volume.
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Lastly here is a shot of the crumb.

Here are the details from the bake:
Room Temp:  77
Water Temp: 62.4
Flour Temp:  77.4
Preferment Temp: 78.6
Final Temp: 77.7 (target 76)
Autolyse: 20 min
Mix: long incorporation + 3 minutes at speed 2, cut on bench, 3 minutes at speed 3
Bulk Fermentation: 1.5 hours with 1 fold at 30, and a half fold at 60
Bench Proof: shape, 15 minute rest, shape, 1 hour bench proof for the minis, with the batard spending ~20 minutes in the fridge to retard development
Bake: ~26 for the minis 40 for the batard @ 460 degrees
Steam: Steamer used pre-load and for ~45 seconds post load on first loaf, and 1 minutes for second

I really enjoyed this bread, the color is beautiful, and while the flavor of the crumb is mild, the aroma of beer and barley is phenomenal.  I'm looking forward to trying this one again sometime and tweaking it to my own nefarious designs.  Thanks as always for reading, if you have any comments, critiques, or suggestions for things you'd like covered or what you'd like me to emphasize in my posts leave it in the comments below, and I'll do my best to accommodate.

-Vino