Cumin something something rye

My cupboard is beginning to be a bit cluttered with half-used bags of flour, so I'll probably be doing a few mixed-grain breads. I don't think I'd decided on that when I started this weekend's bread-making yesterday. In the morning I mixed up a sponge or biga as you please of 300g strong white flour and 300g liquid, including sugar and dried yeast. Partly because of other commitments, I decided to go for a long cold rise, so simply mixed the flour and liquid with a wooden spoon and put it in the fridge for 24 hours.

This morning I split the dough into two portions.

1. I added 100g of wholemeal spelt, salt and kneaded well. At this point I decided to give the dough two rises, so put it back into the fridge.

2. I added 50g rye flour and 50g strong wholemeal, and two teaspoons of cumin seeds. And salt. And similarly kneaded, and put into the fridge.

At 1500 I took the doughs out of the fridge and made a bloomer shape of the spelt mix, and four rolls of the cumin dough.

At 1615 into the oven at a bit under 200C (as I discovered when I used the oven thermometer after about 20 minutes) for 45 minutes.

I haven't tasted the spelt loaf yet, but the cumin rolls are really nice. The mix of flours alone gives an interesting taste, but what really makes the cumin come alive is eating it with cheddar cheese. I think the taste might be too much on its own, though, even though the amount I used is quite subtle.

I suppose one of the things you learn as you go on is that you need to tailor your bread to the way it's going to be eaten, even when you're only thinking about basic whitish sandwich bread.