Rustic Kibbled Wheat & Rye Loaves

Total Time: 6 hrs Preparation Time: 4 hrs 30 mins Cook Time: 1 hr 30 mins

Ingredients

• 1 cup water, tepid
• 1/2 cup milk or 1/2 cup water
• 1/2 teaspoon yeast
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 1 tablespoon brown sugar, scant
• 2 cups active starter (biga)
• 4 cups white bread flour, with kibbled grains

Recipe

• 1 put the water, milk & yeast into a small container & mix. leave for 10 minutes.
• 2 put the oil, salt, brown sugar, biga & flour into a large bowl. add the yeast/water mixture and stir with a wooden spoon for 1 minute.
• 3 using a mixer with a dough hook (i have hand mixer with two dough hooks), mix for 8-10 minutes. the dough will be very sticky & is not suitable for kneading by hand (i thought about it but don't be silly like me!).
• 4 cover & leave in a warm place until nearly doubled (this took me about 1 & 1/2 hours).
• 5 scrape out of the bowl a very well floured bench & gently split into 3 equal portions (i used a very sharp knife). gently fold into loose rounds & leave to rest for about 1 hour. you need to be gentle as you don't want to knock the air out of the mixture.
• 6 gently shape into the form you want, being careful not to knock the air out of the dough. i gently stretched two of these into slipper shapes, and cut the other into 6 rolls, and rested each of the three portions on separate pieces of parchment paper. being careful, put small dimples on the tops of the loaves & leave until doubled (about 1 & 1/2 hours for me).
• 7 just after doing this heat your oven & baking stone to 240 degrees celsius.
• 8 once the loaves have doubled, bake as many as your stone can handle (mine was one portion at a time) for 5 minutes on 240 degrees celsius. lower the temperature to 200 degrees celsius & bake until the base sounds hollow when tapped (about 30 minutes in total for a loaf, 20-25 minutes for the rolls).
• 9 to get a nice crust spray the oven (taking care not to get the bread in the process) with water once or twice during baking.
• 10 once cooled these loaves freeze easily - i normally put them into a freezer bag with a twist tie & pop them in the fast freeze section of my freezer. i then let them defrost on the bench, or if you make rolls you can let them defrost & pop them into the oven on 200 degrees to warm them through.
• 11 for vegan use only the water.