FORUMLAS: Re-dedication Bread

Last weekend I created this recipe for a dinner we did for our church small group.  I made a spaghetti dinner and so the natural thought was a white italian bread like a ciabatta (not actually "like" for that is what i made).  As great as that stuff is with a red sauce (woots from the pizzas in the crowd), I'm not always lookin' to use a piece of bread to sop up the lake of tomatoes my three spaghetti noodles are treading water in.  Sometimes I like having bread as an actual accompaniment to my meal, not as the janitor to my messy plate.

You don't always see noodles deafened past taste in a cacophony of flavorful sauce in Chinese food.  A lot of the time, the cook worked pretty hard to make those noodles.  Have you seen the traditional way chinese chefs handmake egg noodles?  Black magic I tell ya.  Anyways I was raised eating noodles in a light chicken broth or stir fried with just a few things like sliced carrots (always on the diagonal if you want to even call it a stir-fry without offending your wok).

What the heck!  Enough chit-chat.  Here's the formula for my Re-dedication bread.

Re-dedication Bread ->  Hereof re-dedicated to the name "Dedication Bread" because it sounds better.
This bread uses one pre-ferment, one grain soaker, and one night of refrigeration.  It's a planned bread.  This is an adapted recipe from page 126 of Jeffery Hamelman's "Bread:  A Baker's Book of Recipes and Techniques" and the photos were originally posted on facebook along with a random rant that many people found long yet i found quite appropriate.

Re-dedication loaves on top, ciabattas on bottom

Summary:  Mix grain soaker and pre-ferment three nights before baking.  Ferment both at room temp overnight and through the day.  After dinner, mix the final dough, ferment at room temp for 2 hours, refrigerate overnight and through the day.  After yet another dinner, shape the loaves and refrigerate until you're ready to bake.  On bake day, preheat oven and bake loaves directly from fridge as you have room in your oven.  You do not need to allow the dough to warm up from the fridge before baking.  As long as the bread is risen correctly in the fridge, it will bake fine.

Makes three 8-10 inch diameter boules

Grain Soaker
1 generous handful of each of the following:
Sunflower seeds
Pumpkin seeds
Traditional rolled oats
Quinoa (uncooked)
Bulgur wheat

Place all grains in a medium bowl, add water until about one index fingernail above the grains, stir and let sit until you're ready to mix dough (see pre-ferment timing)
Pre-ferment dough
11.2 oz (2.5 c) AP flour plus 1/2 T wheat gluten (cheap option to Bread flour)
7.3 oz (7/8 c) water
.2 oz (1 tsp) Salt
1/8 tsp. dry fleischmanns yeast

Mix in a medium bowl large enough to fit roughly double this mixture, cover and let sit at room temp for 12-18 hours.

Final Dough
Grain Soaker
Pre-ferment dough
1 lb. (3 5/8 c) whole wheat flour
4.8 oz (1 c) AP flour plus pinch of wheat gluten
9.7 oz (1 1/4 c) water
.6 oz (1 T) salt
.13 oz (1 1/4 t) instant dry yeast
1.6 oz (2 T) honey
1 T olive oil

Mix all ingredients, proof at room temp for 2-3 hours, stretching and folding bread once an hour.  Refrigerate at least overnight.  Shape loaves (I proofed mine in floured bannetons) and refrigerate for 12-18 hours. Pre-heat oven and bake loaves directly from fridge.  I bake this bread in a large dutch oven.  Just place your dutch oven on the middle rack when you start pre-heating the oven.  It'll take one or two tries to get the hang of it but if you keep your loaves small enough, you can easily plop your loaf into the dutch oven, place the lid, and stick it back in the oven.  The lid seals the steam escaping the bread as it oven-springs and helps maximize your rise.  Combine that with the cast-iron's ability to hold heat and you've got a great hearth imitator.

This bread makes wonderful morning toast in particular.