SD YW Durum, Ricotta Bread with Pistachio Nuts, Pumpkin & Millet Seeds

With David Snyder recent post of his new take on SFSD with higher amounts of Semolina and Ian’s new bread with semolina, it was only natural that another semolina bread would fit in this week. This one had a small amount of Desert Semolina - 150g.  We wanted to see if the high gluten, not just protein, claims were true.

The bread has 35% whole grains that included millet, another yellow grain and Kamut a durum variety that has a yellow cast too.  We didn’t want the whole grains to take away from the yellow crumb color we were shooting for the Desert Durum.  The small amount of honey was there to sweeten the non yellow AP flour since the yellow ones are pretty sweet all by theselves.

This bread was leavened with combination yeast water and mainly whole grain SD starters.   For the liquid in the dough we used the left over soaker water from our last 100% whole grain pumpernickel bread.  We added some ricotta cheese in keeping with this Altamura shape and Italian leanings of this bread – plus we are growing to like cheese in bread and the moisture it imparts to the crumb.

Since the color of the dough was yellow we thought green add ins would be appropriate and included pumpkin seeds and pistachios along with some millet seeds.  This bread isn’t as complex as some of the others we bake but it wasn’t meant to be since this is about as white a bread as we usually get around to making and we were getting low on white …..eeerrrr….yellow bread.

The levains were built separately over two builds and 8 hours.  The SD portion has spent a few days in the fridge before the final build to get it nice and sour.  The method is similar to or recent bakes but only this time only a 1hour autolyse, with the salt, was used.  We did 10 minutes of slap and folds until the dough was silky smooth and the gluten well developed. 

We incorporated the add ins on the first of 3 S&F’s which were done 15 minutes apart.  After 1 hour of ferment on the counter, the dough was bulk retarded for 14 hours.  In the morning it was allowed to warm up o the heating pad for 2 hours.  It was then shaped Altamura style but once again, it came out too long for the 12” mini oven so we folded each end under to shorten the shaped dough without having to redo it all.

After a 2 hour final proof on the heating pad, we started up the mini oven for preheat with the bottom of the broiler pan 1/4 full of water.   The bread was baked at 450 F with (2) of Sylvia’s steaming cups on the top of the broiler pan with the dough.   After 12 minutes we removed all of the steam and turned the oven down to 425 F, convection this time.

After 5 minutes 3we flipped the bread over on its top  to brownnthe bottom since the bread had sprung well and the top was getting done before the bottom,  5 minutes later we turned the oven down to 400 F convection androtated the bread 180 degrees.  5 minutes later we flipped the bread over and continued to bake for another 5 minutes until the bread reached 205 F on the inside.  All total the bread baked 32 minutes 12 with steam.

The bread crust came out that usual durum color.  It was nicely brown, blistered  and crispy that went soft as it cooled.  The crumb was fairly open but not as much as we expected with the nice rise during proof and the spring in the oven under steam.  Still, it was very soft, moist and airy with the green and brown splotches of the pistachio and pumpkin and the yellow millet bits that stayed crunchy.

Can’t really makeout the ricotta cheese but the soft moistness of it was left behind.  This bread reminds me of bread with cream cheese in it.   We like the taste of this bread and it made a fine sandwich for a late lunch today.  We will be making a version of the bread again.

Formula