Learning from a master - Peter Reinhart

Since retiring I have been obsessed with baking bread, all kinds of bread. When someone at a local bakery said that making brioche was hard, I knew that was my next challenge. It was a wonderful dough to work with. If I could make brioche, there was nothing that I couldn't try. I have accumulated lots of books about baking bread, spent hours pouring over the recipes. There was just one thing missing - time with a baker to watch their techniques and ask them questions.

Problem solved! In my email one day appeared an online course with Johnson & Wales baker Peter Reinhart. I knew he taught there, but going to culinary school was out of the question. Taking an online course was a new adventure:10 lessons, with PDF files for directions, a chat platform to ask questions! Of course I signed up. It has turned out to be the answer to my desire to make better bread. Reinhart answers the questions you pose, provides a place to share projects and pictures of your bread triumphs. You can watch the videos again, if needed. The course is offered through Craftsy.com and is called Artisan Breads.

One of the things he explains is the baker's formula. Using this information I increased the amount of liquid in the spent grain dough to 68% of the flour weight. It created a lighter less dense crumb. The shaping instruction Reinhart provided helped eliminate the tendency of the loaves to split when baking.

This is the recipe for spent grain (dried and ground in the blender) that I have used most recently. It probably will continue to be a work in progress:

• unbleached bread flour   (2 and 1/2 cups)    404 grams
• spent grain     (3/4 cup)     86 grams
• sourdough stiff levain        308 grams
• fine sea salt       10 grams
• water & wort (liquid from the production of spent grains)  333.2 grams

I measure everything on a scale usually in grams. Combine the flour, spent grain, salt and water/wort and mix thoroughly. Cover and wait 20 minutes for the flour to become hydrated. Add the levain, mix with the dough hook or by hand.

Let the dough rest for 5 minutes. Do 4 stretch and folds at 15 minute intervals, covering the ball of dough when resting.

Place the dough in an oiled bowl, cover and let rest 60 - 90 minutes to ferment.

Shape and place on an inverted half sheet pan or cookie sheet on top of a linen couche or kitchen towel. Spray with pan spray and lightly cover with plastic wrap and allow to proof for 60 minutes.

Preheat oven to 500, with a baking stone in place if you have one. When the loaves are ready, make diagonal slices in the tops of the loaves and slide them into the oven. Mist the oven to create steam. Reduce the heat to 450 and bake for 25 to 30 minutes, rotating the loaves after 15 minutes. 

Adjustments in temperatures in your oven may be necessary depending on how it cooks. Aim for an internal temperature of 200 degrees in the loaves.

When it has cooled it is easy to slice by hand in thin enough slices for sandwiches, grilled cheese sandwiches tonight. When it is still warm, or you rewarm it in the oven for a few minutes, slice it thicker for dunking into soup. Anyway you slice it, Yummy!