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On Saturday afternoon, I made another try at the “3 Grain Bread,” recipe from Breads, Breads, & More Breads (#37), a Pillsbury cook booklet from the 1980s. (The bread is misnamed, as it counts AP flour as a different grain from whole wheat.) The adaptation I did the week of October 13 did not rise well and was dense. This time, I again used the additional whole wheat and rye. I decided to do half medium and half dark rye, in part because the medium rye is more expensive, and I want to save it for another recipe. I replaced the 3 Tbs. butter with 2 ½ Tbs. olive oil, since I like how the olive oil works in Len’s famous Whole Wheat/Rye/Semolina bread. I replaced ¼ cup bran with ¼ cup flax meal, and I again used 2 cups buttermilk. The additional ¼ cup of water, and another ½ cup bread flour, as well as a bit more honey and 4 ½ tsp. yeast resulted in two beautiful loaves of bread now cooling on a rack on my counter. Both rises were long: the first one as 80 minutes and the second an hour. I don’t know if that is the dough or due to a cooler house. I did the rises on the dining room table, as the heat from the wood stove wafts up, so it is around 71F there. I tried a different shaping technique, based on the discussions at Nebraska Kitchen. After pre-shaping, I did not fold the dough but pressed it down just a bit, then tucked it around all the edges, being sure to seal the seam on the bottom. It worked on these loaves, which baked in 9x5 bread pans. I look forward to slicing a loaf for lunch tomorrow.
