St Paddy’s Day Challenge YW Shamrock on a !00% Whole Wheat SD Chacon

This year we decided to update our Ballymaloe 100% whole wheat bake from last year by including a 100 % white shamrock on top of the 100 % whole wheat base.  We cut the scald by 25% and used Young’s Double Chocolate Stout for the liquid in the while wheat portion.

I know what you are saying and I jumped on Lucy for not using Guinness instead of an English stout but she was ready for me.  The YW white bread, that used the soaker liquid from the wheat berry scald, has chocolate covered pepitas in the mix as its add in and Guinness doesn’t come in a double chocolate flavor and chocolate was the uniting thread in this 100% whole grain brown and 100% white bread.

The SD version had a 2 stage 6 hour levain build and the YW version had a 1 stage 12 hour build where it was stirred down at the 4 and 8 hour marks.  All the leavin building was done on the heating pad at 82 F.  Both the SD 66% hydration seed and the YW came out of the fridge with the SD in there a week and the YW in there at least a month.  Once both 100% hydration levains had doubled they went in the fridge for 24 hours.

Both of the dough went though the same process, autolyse (no salt or levain) of 3 hours for the WW and 1 hour for the YW version.  Once the salt and levain were added we did (2) sets of slap and folds of 5 and 1 minutes for both and then 3 sets of S&F’s on 20 minute intervals.  Both deveoped gluten well.

The add ins were incorporated on the first set of S&F’s and they were evenly distributed by the end of the third set.  Since the kitchen was 76-78 F during most of the hand work, we didn’t get out the heating pad to keep the dough warm.

We found a hot cross bun in the freezer this morning and made it into a shamrock for breakfast.  It has been in the freezer for almost a year and it tasted just as good as the original - amazing!

We shaped the YW white dough into a circle and then used the dough knife to cut it into the shape of a 4 petal shamrock with a stem and tried to place it in the bottom of the basket but it just wouldn’t go in as a shamrock and looked like a misshapen round alien thing instead.

If we would have shaped each petal separately and placed them that way, like we normally do,  it would have been way easier and actually looked like a shamrock in the end – so don’t do like we did so you don’t have to slash a shamrock on the top of the bread before baking like we did – which turned out to be another fiasco.

The much larger WW SD brown portion was air shaped into a huge bialy and placed on top of the white blob in the basket.  At this point, the dough was retarded for 12 hours in the fridge.

At the 12 hour mark we removed the dough from the fridge to warm on the counter as we pre-heated Big Old Betsy to 550 F.   Once BOB was at 550 F we placed 2 of Sylvia’s steaming pans and one large pan of steaming lava rocks in the bottom of the oven and let them get to billowing steam speed which took 15 more minute allowing the 2 lagging stones to get to get to 550 F too.

Weun-molded he dough onto parchment on a  peel, crudely scored a shamrock on the white portion of the dough and slid it into the oven for a 15 minute steam at 475 F.   We then took out the steam and baked the bread at 425 F  for 25 more minutes until the inside hit 205 F.

It sprang and bloomed pretty well under the steam and heat and browned up boldly too.  The white YW shamrock portion also got some blisters as we hoped it would to set itself apart from the WW brown part,which had small blisters - quite a contrast..  It smelled wonderful as it baked.  We will wait on the crumb shots until after lunch.

The crumb for the 100% WW SD portion was as open as one could expect and the crumb for the YW white portion was not as open as it could have been if we didn't overwork it so much getting it shaped and plopping it in the basket and then trying to make it look like a shamrock:-)  Both were tasty, especially the SD WW portion but the chocolate Pumpkin seeds were a treat too.

How did that smoked chicken and ribs get in there?

The crumb was soft, glossy and moist while the crust stayed a little bit crisp as it cooled.  It sure ended up being a nice looking bread on the inside and out and Lucy is especially happy the shamrock scoring came though, to sort of actually look like one,  if you are half blind!  This bread should hold up well against the corned beef and cabbage to served on St Patrick's Day the world over.

This bread cost $4.25 cents to make, including electricity, but $2 of that was the double chocolate stout:-)  In contrast, our normal white SD bread, weighing in at pound and half baked, comes in at 99 cents a loaf.

 Lucy was pretty tuckered out after this one but she looks satisfied that it turned out all right in the end.  Happy St Patrick's Day to all.