Waiting on the rain.
While we wait let’s talk more about the wheat varieties Steve and Tan have chosen to pursue. To the surprise of Steve and Tan the blends from the last harvest came in at fairly high protein levels.
The Yecora blend being a hard red wheat and already known for its great baking qualities in the U.S. came in at 12.8%. This is a really interesting grain variety for us, it adds a beautiful rich colour to the bread while being full of flavour and creating a pleasing texture. Plus it’s like a workhorse grain, it holds up to being well hydrated and seems to be able to tolerate a strong mix (we can mix for it for a while and the resulting dough is reasonably elastic but doesn’t tear apart). It can be easily used to make hearth loaves or tin loaves, I feel like this grain could be a game changer for whole wheat bread in Australia!
The purple straw blend, a soft white wheat, came in at 15.2%. While we believe it makes a really good bread, it seems like it’s being used more for cakes and sweets, which from what little info we can find on it seems to be what it was traditionally used for despite the protein level of this particular sample being higher than the so called ‘bread’ wheat Yecora. It’s a flour to blend if you’re unsure, with a flavour that holds up even at a small percentage of the overall formula. Honey sweet and malty, while adding a beautiful texture to bread that I think you only get with softer wheats.
Then the Hot Scotch Landrace (HSL) won the day at 16.1%! A standout to us flavour wise, with a really rich and unique flavour. The flour lends itself to blending really well, while our few attempts at making 100% HSL loaves have been on the trickier side. Which I think comes down to milling quality, so far we’ve really only been able to achieve quite a coarse flour that basically performs like coarse flour does. At the degree of fineness we’ve been able to achieve, it actually tends to play a bit like what you would expect from rye flour. A grain we’re really excited for our friends with New American Stone Mills and other types of mills to try their hand at. Perhaps our little Osttiroller just ain’t the right mill for it.
Regardless, it’s a pretty amazing grain with an amazing little story. The name Hot Scotch is a tribute to the late John Reid of Red Beard Bakery in Trentham, Victoria. In reference to the 120+ year old scotch oven so many of us spent time at over the years but also to his Instagram account @hotscotchoven and I know many of us miss getting comments of fireballs and explosions, a simple nod from a larger than life character in our industry and someone we respected greatly. While we definitely didn’t know John as well as others but his passion, drive and hospitality was something we take inspiration from. We used to say that everything at Red Beard Bakery just tasted like it should, nothing super fancy just simple foods made with exceptional quality ingredients and a little tender love.
John was really excited about the grains that were growing out at Burrum. Even popping out during Covid knockdowns, I mean lockdowns, in 2020 to help hand weed the original trial plots. Once the idea of naming the blend after John was sparked, Steve ,Tan, Jackie and myself had a bit of a brainstorm as to what the name should be, eventually landing on Hot Scotch. With landrace being added to reflect what the blend is and hopefully what it will become. We wanted it to be a tribute, to show our respects and in a small way help to carry on John’s legacy in our small community of bakers and to create an avenue for newcomers to know someone who influenced so many of us.
Back to the farm. It’s dry out here, we’ve not had a decent rain since last year 2024 and the ground is so hard that any decent little rain just runs off. Being bakers we simply just didn’t understand how much of a risk planting in a low rainfall season/drought is. But this season is looking to be a straight up gamble and educated guess as to what’s going to happen.
For sure more has happened in the meantime and once again we’ve written this very retrospectively (it is now October and we’ve had ‘some ‘a little’ rain). But it was important to get the next chapter to print in preparation for GraiNZ 2025! Which is being hosted in Pomonal at our bakery and our community hall as well as a day out at said farm with our farmers Steve and Tan. What better way to bring the story to life than to spend two days with the main characters. Happy reading and we look forward to meeting our readers at GraiNZ this year.
Nick and Jackie
