Bread Primer: Rye and Wheat Berry Loaves
A tale as old as time, and it all begins with a single grain. A grain that is planted in the still dry roots of awakening March soil, fed by sweet April showers and the lengthening rays of a young sun. The single grain grows from tender shoot into tall windswept stalks, it’s harvested, more grains are gathered, and once more scattered into soil the following spring. From grain, to patch of wheat, to a field of abundant harvest, the effects of this potent and fertile cycle that starts at this time of year, reverberates throughout the seasons to follow.
The feel of plunging my hands into a jute bag full of rye berries or wheat grains is a deeply sensuous and satisfying sensation at any time of year, but especially so when buds and shoots start to quicken under the evergreens and still bare alders. As I watch the young light of the growing sun fall gently in from the cottage windows and light up my pot of wheat berries waiting to go on the stove, my mind wanders away to the farms and fields laid out like a patchwork blanket across the northern hemisphere. I think of acres of wheat and corn and rye, both present day and ancient, of the workers of the land, of men and women with till and plow and spade, who have walked out on to soil wet with the first sprinklings of spring, with steady hope and anticipation in their hearts. Hope for warmth and fertile wetness, hope for the sight of fresh green sprouts, and always the anticipation of an abundant harvest. That golden autumnal horizon to which the farmer’s eyes are instinctively looking towards, even now, even as early as spring and early summer.
So although my busy cottage kitchen produces seedy, grainy breads and baked goods at any time of year, it is in this stepping-stone time, these wispy in-between days of our very chilly northwestern springs, when warming days gently shake off the last of the wintry chills from her greening boughs and bushes, that it feels especially appropriate to bake these rustic wheat berry loaves.
The practice of including cooked grains and legumes in bread is as old as bread making itself. The bread bakers and cooks of old had a sense of economy and a loathing for wastefulness that would seem far too fastidious and out of place in these consumer driven and increasingly wasteful modern world we live in. But to me, that careful, mindful approach to our food resources, both in times of scarcity and abundance, that desire to make do and re-use as much of what we eat and drink in creative and delicious ways, is the essence of my relationship to food, cooking and home baking.
These loaves are full of wheat grains that really do look like plump little red berries once they’ve soaked up all of the wine and water elixir they’re cooked in. The wine soaked gains add a satisfying crunch and depth of flavour to the finished loaf, while also keeping the crumb moist and chewy for many days. If you’d rather not use alcohol please feel free to substitute with a fruit juice. Either way, these loaves are just bursting with texture and flavour. I like to eat them thickly spread with some good butter, as I sit by the fire on a chilly winter morning, listening to the first hesitant bird song, and watching the morning rays reach ever deeper into the corners of the cottage, banishing the last of the winter shadows from their hiding places.
Recipe and instructions:
To cook the wheat berries you’ll need:
200g whole wheat berries
enough water to cover
enough red wine to cover
For the bread dough
350g All purpose/ Strong bread flour (a flour with 11.5-12 % protein content)
100g fine whole wheat flour
50g dark rye, finely ground
25 g brown sugar
10g instant yeast
1 tsp diastatic malt powder
325g liquid, made up with strained wine and water at room temp
10 salt
To cook the wheat berries:
Combine the wheat berries and just enough water to cover the berries with about ½ inch of water. Bring to the boil quickly, then turn the heat down and let it simmer very gently for about 45 minutes; don’t let the water level fall exposing the berries, keep topping up with fresh water, just enough to keep the berries covered.
After 45 mins, remove from heat, drain the water, then cover the berries in the same pot with just enough water so that all the berries are soaking in wine. Allow to sit and soak overnight.
The next day, strain the berries into your main mixing bowl, save the strained wine. Measure the amount of strained wine and add enough water to make up 325g of liquid in total.
To make the dough:
Combine all the flours, brown sugar, yeast, and diastatic malt powder in the mixing bowl of your stand mixer, or large bowl if you’re hand-mixingAdd the cooked and cooled wheat berries into the flour, and combine using your hands or a dough whisk.
Add the salt to the water, then the water into the flour. Mix with the dough whisk till the dough reaches the shaggy dough stage; cover with a cloth and leave for 30-40 minutes, allowing the flour to hydrate.
Knead on the dough setting of your stand-mixer for 7 minutes, or till the dough has pulled away from the sides of the bowl and does not feel tacky when touched. In bread making, humidity is key. So depending on the humidity level in your kitchen on any given day, you will either need to add more flour, for a dough that is still very sticky and not pulling off the sides after 7 minutes of kneading, or add a touch more water, for a dough that comes together too fast into the kneading time and feels tough and inelastic early in the kneading process.
Transfer the kneaded dough into a lightly oiled bowl or dough rising container of choice. Leave for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, tip dough out onto a light oiled surface and give it a “Turn”. By this mean the following: stretch the right half of the dough outwards with your hands and then fold it back in on itself. The take the left half of the dough, stretch it up and outwards, and fold back on top of the previously folded section, doing what is known as an letter turn.
Return to the rising container. Leave for another hour, until the dough has doubled in size, and you can see a good network of holes developing under the surface.
Tip the dough onto a lightly floured surface, and divide into four equal portions.
Shape each portion into a stick or baton, using the shaping method shown in the picture above.
Lay each baton, seam side down onto a floured cloth, pleating the cloth and laying each stick snugly next to each other.
Leave to rise for another hour.
About 30 minutes turn your oven on to 245C/470F.
Carefully release the pleats from the cloth and gently, either using the length of your forearm or a long, thin piece of sturdy cardboard, roll the dough off the cloth and on to a large baking tray.
Using either a sharp knife, or a bread slashing ‘lame’, make 3-4 diagonal slashes across the length of each baton. My bread ‘lame’ was made by attaching my favourite German razor blade onto a long wooden coffee stirrer, with the end slightly shaved off to fit the razor through.
Bake, either on your baking stone or the center of the oven, for 10 minutes, then turn the oven down to 190C/375F and bake for another 20 minutes, until the loaves develop a rich golden-brown colour, and sound hollow when tapped on the bases with your knuckles.
Leave to cool completely on a wire rack.
