Leinsamenbrot Recipe by Daniel Leader

[BakerAunt]

I bought a copy of Daniel Leader's Living Bread a couple of years ago. The recipes are more complicated than I usually bake, with ingredients not easily available for bakers living in a rural area. I wanted to try this flax seed bread, so I found a source for rye flakes. Today I have started the recipe. I made one change in that I do not use flax seed, so I substituted an equal weight of flax meal.

The bread is on its first rise, and I'm letting it go a bit longer than the 1 hour and 30 minutes, as the house is cooler, and it has not quite reached the nearly doubled mark. What puzzles me is that he says the recipe makes two loaves, but there does not seem to be enough dough for two 9x5 inch loaves. The dough started at the quart line, and is now approaching the two-quart line, and that is the amount of dough I usually use for a single loaf.

I'm trying to decide if I should trust him on this, or if there is an error. I looked online but did not find any errata. Can it really make two 557g loaves? The picture in the book actually shows three standard-sized loaves.

Here are the grains amounts:
22 g whole wheat flakes
25 g rye flakes
425 g whole wheat flour
95 g medium rye flour
40 grams flax seed (I used ground)

Any thoughts on this? I'm about to turn the dough out and divide it into two pieces, at which point it rests for 15 minutes before shaping.

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[BakerAunt]

Added note: The dough weighed 1.070 kg. I've divided it into two parts. I am leaning toward using two 4x8 inch pans.

[Mike Nolan]

That's about 1.4 pounds of grain/flour, so I doubt it will make 2 full-sized loaves, much less three of them. A standard 'one pound' loaf pan was named that because it accommodated dough made with one pound of flour.

Flax seed behaves like a seed in dough, flax meal behaves more like egg, or so I'm told. Not sure if that's enough to have much impact, but it sure won't increase the dough volume by enough to make 2 full-sized loaves.

[BakerAunt]

Thanks, Mike. The recipe did not include cup measurements, and I have not yet gotten to the place where I can visualize grams. It did not help that the recipe said to put the dough in a 4 qt. dough bucket to rise, which implies that it needs lots of space. However, my dough started out at 1 qt. and rose to the 2 qt. line. The recipe said to let it double, and it did. Each baked loaf weighs 1 pound 1.1 oz. If I had put the dough in just one 8x4 pan, I think it would have been fine. Clearly, the book has an error. The recipe makes a single loaf.

I'm going to try it again, as soon as we eat these little loaves. I will leave the flax meal out of the soaker, since it gummed it up, and add it with the flour. I will also use the bread machine, as my mixer does better with large amounts of dough. Of course, that is assuming that we like the taste of the bread when I cut it tomorrow.

[Mike Nolan]

There are a few conversions you just have to memorize, one is that a pound is 453.5 grams.

[BakerAunt]

Thanks, Mike. I will commit that number to memory.

I'm wondering if I could replace the flax seeds with sunflower seeds in the soaker. That changes the character of the bread the title but would still include some kind of seed. The sunflower seeds are larger. Any thoughts on that route?

[Mike Nolan]

I've made bread with both, haven't noticed much difference between them, though I do like the taste of sunflower seeds better. I like to toast them a little before they go in the dough, whether the recipe calls for that or not.

[BakerAunt]

The bread has great flavor, and the texture allows for thin slices if desired. I will definitely bake it again.

The recipe starts with a yeasted soaker that includes flax seeds, whole wheat flakes, rye flakes, 2g yeast and 120 g water. Leader says that the "combination of wheat flakes, rye flakes, and flax seeds give the bread great flavor, especially because they've been allowed to ferment with the yeast" (p.143). I had added the flax meal to that, which made for a gummy soaker, although I do not think it affected the rise.

I used the malted wheat flakes that King Arthur sells.

[cwcdesign]

BakerAunt, I keep a bookmark to the King Arthur Ingredient Weight Chart. It lists a lot of ingredients that I'm often curious about regarding weight and cups, etc. It lists the cups (sometimes ¼ or ½ cups but all you have to do is double) ounces and grams. I find it helps me with my visuals.

For example it lists ½ a cup of olive oil so if I need say 1/3, I'll double the grams then divide by 3. It works for me.

[BakerAunt]

Thanks, CWCdesign. I will check it out.

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