Sprouted Sourdough White Bread - A New Style SFSD

I guess this isn’t technically a white bread but is about as close a Lucy gets to one at 23% whole grain with all the whole grains sprouted, dried and milled at home.  This one was a little bit different with the hydration reduced to 73% making for a much  less sloppy dough than usual.

The whole grains used were wheat, emmer, spelt and rye this time and the lower hydration required 2 slaps to 1 fold when we got around to doing them.  We sifted the sprouted grain and used the 28% hard bits to feed the 3 stage levain as usual.  This week the 8 g of rye sour starter used had been retarded in the fridge for 8 weeks and the levain ended up being 13% of the flour.

We built the levain on a heating pad, per our winter method, and after the levain had doubled after the 3rd feeding, we retarded it for 16 hours instead of our usual 24 hours.  Once the levain came out of the fridge the next day we warmed it up for 1 hour on the heating pad as we autolysed the dough flour and water with the salt sprinkled on top.

The white flour was a 50 / 50 mix of KA bread flour and LaFama AP.  Once everything came together in the mixing bowl we did 3 sets of slap and folds of 7,1 and 1 minute and 3 stets of stretch and folds from the compass points.  All the dough development exercises were done on 20 minute intervals.

The dough was rested between manipulations in an oiled SS bowl on the heating pad between manipulations.  The dough was pre-shaped, then final shaped 10 minutes later, placed seam side down in a rice floured basket, bagged and placed into the fridge for a 16 hour retard in place of out usual 12 hour one.

Once the dough came out of the fridge the next morning we let it warm up on the counter for an hour and half before firing up BOB to 500 F with the Lodge combo cooker inside.  We planned to watch it closely after over baking last week’s first attempt with the cooker due to a faulty probe thermometer.  So this week’s theme is’ no thermometer means better bread in the end!

The blisters even showed themselves on the bottom!  This bread made for a fine lunch sandwich with turkey pastrmi and the usual fruits, berries veggies and salad.

Since the bread was baked seam side up, no slashing was required.  After upending the dough onto parchment the transfer to the hot combo cooker was easy as pie.  Once the cooker went into the oven we turned the oven down to 450 F for 20 minutes of steam instead of 15 like last week..

Once the lid came off we turned the oven down to 425 F – convection this time.  The bread sprang and bloomed well under steam. And 5 minutes under the lower dry heat we took the bread off the cooker bottom and finished baking it on the stone. 10 minutes after the lid came off, 30 minutes total, we called the loaf done, turned off the oven and let it sit on the stone for 5 more minutes and then transferred it to a cooling rack.

It browned and blistered well enough and the bottom thump sounded hollow too.  We will have to wait and see how the crumb came out with the much lower hydration of this bake.  The crust is thin and softly chewy.  The crumb is  soft, open, moist and glossy.  The taste is superb!  I prefer it to the same bread made with the same but not sprouted  whole grains.  We will have to see what the wife says about it tonight.  I can see olive oil, Parmesan, Pecorino, fresh basil, and roseary with a grind or 3 of pepper on a plate for dipping right now. 

This bread cost 95 cents to make including energy costs.  If you include the combo cooker, baking stones, dehydrator and mill this loaf of sprouted SD was only $300 :-)  We would like to try this recipe at 30% whole sprouted grains to see lf we like that version better. Nothing like a new style of SFSD to play around with.....

For those using thermometers, now that I have new batteries in mine, we baked this bread to 207 F.  After letting  it sit  in the off oven for 5 more minutes,  it hit 209 F.

Lucy reminds us not to forget the salad or even the smoked chicken noodle soup:-)