Rustic Kibbled Wheat & Rye Loaves

I used half of Mean Chef's biga (81918) for this recipe. I also used Allinson's (which is a British brand) white bread flour with kibbled grains of wheat & rye, although if you do not have this available you may wish to use 3 & 1/2c of strong white bread flour & add 1/2c of grains. Using biga gives a lovely textured loaf with a tangy taste, it seems a bit time consuming but I actually spent less time in the kitchen than if I had baked a cake. Time includes proving time.

• Ready In: 6 hrs
• Yields: 3 loaves

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

Directions

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 onto 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.