White SD YW Bread with Walnuts for Christmas Turkey Stuffing

We though panettone would be the last bake of the year, and it will be, but Lucy found  at least two more bakes before then - to use up some more panettone white SD / YW levain.

This one is for some white croutons to be used for the turkey stuffing on Christmas day.  Since the stuffing will have walnuts in it we put some in the bread just to keep it from being completely boring.

We used 50 g each of SD and YW levain at 100% hydration for the 516g g loaf that had 6 g of salt and came in at 72% overall hydration - meaning there was 20% levain,  247 g of AP dough flour and 163 g of dough water besides the 2 levains.  The walnuts weren’t measured but it looked like about 50 g or so making the overall weight 565 g.

After mixing the dough and doing 6 minutes of slap and folds to develop the gluten, we let the dough rest for 45 minutes before doing the first of 2 stretch and folds 1 hour apart and incorporated the walnuts on the first one and they were evenly distributed at the end of 2nd compass point stretch and fold.

We let shaped the dough and placed it in the basket inside  a plastic shopping bag to proof on the counter for 1 hours before being placed outside in the 39 - 45 F Arizona  winter overnight cold for a 15 hour retard with the last 6 hours being in the fridge the next morning.

When we took the dough out this afternoon we saw the purple streaks that the walnuts had left in the dough as it did its cold proof and noticed it was right at 85 % proof too.  We took it out of the fridge to finish its proofing as the mini oven heated up to 500 F.

We used (2) of Sylvia’s steaming cups to get mega steam in the mini oven.  We un-molded the bread onto the vented top of the mini’s broiler pan that was covered in parchment paper, did a quick diamond slash and into the mini the whole assembly went.

After 5 minutes we turned the oven down to 475 F and 7 minutes later we removed the steam.  The bread looked like it had sprung fairly well and we turned th oven down to 425 F, convection this time.  In another 10 minutes the bread had reached 205F in th inside when the bread was removed to the cooling rack.

The smoked bone in pork sirloin looks pretty nice for Chistmas Eve and so does the brisket. 

The bread browned very well and the blisters the mini oven is famous for showed up again to make a very handsome loaf.  the inside is just as pretty with the purple splotches of walnut contrasting with the crumb soft off white.  The crumb wasn't as open as we thought it would be with the great spring and bloom but it was soft and moist.  It tastes less sour than out usual due to so many feedings of the levain but the walnuts make up for it.  Too good for stuffing croutons  - heaven's no!  Merry Christmas to all!