Spelt-Carrot Bread: B&R Artisan Bakers
There is no denying that the quality of bread is now quite good here is the United States, and has been for the last 30 years or so. I recently attended the Bread Baker’s Guild of America Camp Bread in San Francisco, where ‘campers’ (as you are called while attending) spent 3 days learning the art of baking from some of the best bakers in this country and abroad. Not surprisingly the experience level of most ‘campers’, a large percentage of whom either work in bakeries or are bakery owners, was extremely high.
Given that there are so many great bakers these days the possibility of coming upon a great bakery wherever you find yourself is quite high. Lately, as I travel around I have started to look for breads that are not only well executed, but use non-traditional combinations of ingredients with the result being a unique yet delicious loaf. I came across one such bread in Framingham, Mass at B & R Artisan Breads.
The place is owned by Michael Rhoads (the baker, and the ‘R’ in the name) and his wife Jen Bones (the ‘B’) and has been open for less than 2 years. They are ably assisted by Wayne Kaufman, who came to B and R with a pastry background but he certainly seems to fill the role of ‘right hand man’.
I’ve known Michael for a few years. I first met him when he was the baker at Sel de la Terre, a restaurant in Boston. We lost contact for a while and then I got a call from him after he had opened up B & R. Michael’s breads are really beautiful: the doughs are are wet, giving many of the loaves an open crumb structure and the bake yields breads with plenty of color. They do all the standard traditional loaves including baguettes, pullman loaves, and a great moist ciabatta. But the real treat, for me, was a loaf they are only making in small amounts for one restaurant customer: a Spelt Carrot loaf.
I’ve got to confess that as I was driving down I was thinking shredded carrot mixed into a spelt dough. It sounded cool but I really was underestimating the full potential of the loaf. First of all Michael uses carrot juice (not shredded carrot), and he buys it (as opposed to juicing carrots in the bakery), as he wants carrot juice with a consistent color and sugar content. Originally, he was making this bread with carrot puree, surprisingly, though the flavor wasn’t as good.
The dough is a combination of a winter wheat bread flour (11.7% protein) and spelt flour. A biga (a stiff starter) is used, along with a spelt levain and a corn grit ‘soaker’ in which the grits are soaked in the carrot juice. And if you (like me) thought all that might be enough, he also adds pumpkin seeds at the end of the mix.
So, it’s a complicated loaf, but the end result is a bread unlike any I’ve had before. The general procedure is this (and of course can be modified to suit your production schedule). First you build a biga of bread flour, water, salt and a tiny amount of yeast. The yeast, of course, is optional but B&R uses just a small amount to better fit the bread into their schedule. It’s this biga that gives the final dough the strength to hold together all the diverse ingredients. Next a spelt levain must be made from spelt flour, water and a rye starter. And finally, the corn grits must be soaked in carrot juice (for amounts on all of these, please see the accompanying formula). All three of these, the biga, the levain and the soaker are put together 10-12 hours before the mix. Granted there are a lot of components to this formula but many of them I’m sure you already have in your bakery: rye starter, a biga or some other stiff starter, etc. And if you don’t then this might be a great opportunity to start using them.
On the day of the bake you need to place the biga, the spelt levain, and the corn grits soaker in the mixer bowl along with the carrot juice, salt, and yeast. Hold back on adding the pumpkin seeds until the last minute of the mix as they will chop up your developing dough if added too early. A couple of things to note is that while this loaf is called ‘carrot spelt’ there is only around 23% spelt flour in the overall formula. As a result this dough is much easier to work with than a dough with a higher percentage of spelt flour but still must be handled with care. Micheal said that you should handle this dough much like you would a rye dough – never pushing the dough further than it can go at any one stage in the development. The other caution Micheal repeated several times is to be extremely careful when adding either the water or the carrot juice to the dough. Hold back some of the liquid and add it in portions as the dough comes together: too much liquid and this will be a very difficult dough to work with. You want to aim for a 68-72 percent hydration in the final dough.
After the dough is mixed it is dumped into bins where it will undergo its bulk fermentation: 2 turns at 40 minute intervals. When Michael dumped out the dough it still looked quite wet and didn’t have the look of a fully mixed dough. Michael said again, as with rye, you let the dough give you an indication of how far you can take it at any one step, and apparently he didn’t want to take this mix any further. 40 minutes after the first fold (time for the second fold) the dough looked great: it had smoothed out, the glisten of free water was gone and it looked like it had good strength, so much so that Michael opted not to give it the final fold.
The shaping is done in stages, never taking the dough further than it can go. First it is divided and rounded and given a rest. Next, an intermediate shaping and then a final shaping where it is then placed (at B & R) in long, narrow reed baskets for its final proof. On the day I was there that final proof was around 45 minutes. The bake lasts 30 – 35 minutes in a 450F oven with steam at the beginning.
As you can see from the pictures, the result is a beautiful loaf, with great color: a deep brown with, obviously, a shade of orange showing where the cuts expose the interior. When sliced, the crumb is fairly tight, owing to the ingredients used, but the orange-brown color is highlighted with the green from the pumpkin seeds.
The restaurant that B and R sells this bread to uses it as their table bread. What a great way to start a meal. With the loaf I brought home we ate it with a simple German style dinner of cheese, cold cuts, and mustard. This is such a great, flavorful bread that combines unique ingredients successfully.
Spelt Carrot Bread
Biga % g
bread flour 100% 1020
water 68.0% 694
salt 0.0% 0
instant yeast 0.1% 1
total 168.1% 1715Spelt Levain % g
spelt flour 100.0% 1022
water 80.0% 818
rye starter 20.0% 204
total 200.0% 2044Corn Grit Soaker % g
corn grits 100.0% 711
water 50.0% 496
total 150% 1207Final Formula % g
bread flour 100% 2044
carrot juice 57.0% 1165
salt 5.6% 114
instant yeast 0.1% 2
biga 84.0% 1716
spelt levain 100.0% 2044
pumpkin seeds 24.0% 400
corn grit soaker 30% 1207
total 400.7% 8692Overall Totals % g
bread flour 68.30% 3064
spelt flour 22.78% 1022
pumpkin seeds 8.92% 400
corn grits 15.85% 711
water 70.73% 3137
rye starter 4.55% 204
salt 2.54% 114
instant yeast 0.70% 3
