If Ballymaloe Baked Sourdough Brown Bread with WW Scald & Guinness in a DO

After the our take on Ballymaloe’s Brown Bread with Guinness and Biga, turned out so nice for St. Paddy’s Day, we wondered why we haven’t ever seen this bread baked as a sourdough at Ballymaloe?  So we thought we would give it a go with Not Mini's Ancient WW SD Starter that is almost 2 weeks old and nearly tripling after 8 hours now.

The starter saga can be found here:

 http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/32665/mini-ovens-no-muss-no-fuss-starter-8-days-laater

The Ballymaloe Brown Bread for St Paddy’s Day can be found here:

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/32718/st-paddy%E2%80%99s-day-feast-sort-ballymaloe-100-ww-brown-bread-and-irish-ruben%E2%80%99s

This bread is just the perfect first loaf for Not Mini’s Ancient WW SD starter, even if only 13 days old and still a baby.

Some of the changes we made to the last bake were; upping the levain from 180 g to 240 g to try to account for a starter not quite on its pegs yet, adding a 100g (dry weight) scald since the last bake was crying out for one, replacing the 50 g of soft white wheat in the levain with whole red wheat,  reducing the molasses to 30 g from 45 g to make the bread less sweet, upping the VWG to 20 g from 15 to help out the new starter, adding 3 g each of red and white malt powders and 10 g of Toadies to the mix.  We love Toadies and the added flavor it imparts to the bread.  The hydration ended up 3.5 points lower at 85% due to the more dry add in ingredients and less molasses and nearly 200 g grams heavier than the last Brown Bread bake.

We have been reviving the 8 day old near dead and tumor bearing starter from its flour coffin for the past 5 days.   By feeding it straight WW at 100% hydration and refreshing it every 12 hours it has made progress.  We think we have it in good enough shape to try it out on this bread for its first bread.

The lid comes off and it had sprung an inch above the rim almost touching the top of the DO lid..

We did 30 minutes of autolyse excepting the levain and the scald.  We also changes the process this time to do 4 sets of S&F’s over 2 hours on 30 minute increments to develop the gluten further and incorporate the scalded berries during the third set and getting them really evenly distributed at the end of the 4^th set. 

As a final change, we decided to do the bulk ferment and a final proof in a small CI enameled Dutch oven and retard it for 20 hours between the two.  The bulk ferment on the counter was 2 hours.  After taking the DO out of the fridge we let the dough final proof on the counter for 4 hours before putting it into a 425 F oven to steam for 30 minute.

We then took the lid off and turned the oven down to 350 F to bake another 10 minutes before removing the bread from the DO and finish baking it on the oven rack between two stones until it hit 205 F.  We turned the oven off and left the bread on the bottom stone for 10 minutes to crisp the crust with the oven door ajar before removing to a cooling rack. 

The loaf rose well in the fridge during retard and on the heating pad during final proof .  Unlike the previous bake, this loaf sprang well in the oven.  We are glad we decided to bake the loaf this way rather than as a pumpernickel - low and slow.  The crust was dark brown, crisp and glossy when it came out of the oven like DO's put on bread.  It smells very good and my apprentice is very proud of the Not Mini's Ancient SD starter for its first bake at 14 days of age.  It really did its job and some sour came through.

The crumb turned out fairly open, moist and glossy for a 100% whole wheat bread.  It tastes very good and a little tangy.  It isn't as sweet as the biga brown bread from SP Day.We like this one a lot but both are very good in their own way.  Now we have to bake this one like a pumpernickel :-)

Volunteer zinnia  in the front yard.  Everything is blooming in AZ except the cactus which will be very soon.

Formula