Sprouted 4 Grain Sourdough White Bread with 40 Hour Retard and Yogurt Whey

I am always amazed what Lucy manages to come with in her spare time when no dreaming up bread recipes.  This week she has developed a new piece of software that turns an existing piece of hardware into something truly unique and transformative for all bread bakers.

As we well know, Lucy loves Pumpernickel bread and she thinks every other kind of bread is inferior and almost woossie like.  Every time she takes a bite of another kind of bread, she wishes it tasted like pumpernickel.  Now she thinks she has fixed that problem once and for all.

The green tinge of yogurt whey is unmistakable.

She took a pair of Bluetooth headphones and reprogrammed them not only to deliver sound waves to your ears, but also the taste of Pumpernickel bread.  Now she claims she can listen to her favorite tunes and TV shows but when she bites into any kind of bread it tastes like this Pumpernickel – her mist recent favorite  Really Dark Old School Sprouted Pumpernickel – In memory of Barbra

So to test out her new invention, she came up with one of her most white sourdough recipes at a bit less than 19% whole sprouted 4 grain.  She thought  that if this bread, which is nearly as bland as she gets, could end up tasting like her most powerful and complex tasting bread of all time, then she is one step closer to her dream of being the first Billionaire Baking Apprentice 2nd Class .

This white SD bread isn’t as tame flavor wise as one would thinks though.  She subbed yogurt whey for the dough liquid, used the 15 week retarded rye sour starter, retarded the levain for 24 hours after the 3rd stage doubling and retarded the dough for 40 hours of bulk ferment after the gluten development.  This bread is really retarded!

We did our usual sifting of the sprouted grain flour, after it was sprouted, dried and milled and fed the 14% hard bits and some of the 86% extraction to the starter to make the levain and in the fridge it went.  The gluten development was also our recent 3 sets of 30 slap and folds, this time on 20 minute intervals (10 minutes less each), and 2 sets of 4 slap and folds on 30 minute intervals (15 minutes less each).

This reduced our normal gluten development phase in the 88 F summer kitchen heat by a full hour.  This was Lucy’s plan since she wanted a 40 hour bulk retard instead of the usual 21 hour one.   The levain pre-fermented flour amount was a low 10.6% so she thought this would work out as an even trade of time.

When the dough finally came out of the fridge this morning, we immediately did a quick pre-shape into a boule and placed it back in the plastic covered  oiled bowl for a one hour warm up before the final shaping and placing the boule in the rice floured basket seam side up for a quick 30 minute high temp proof out side where it was 102 F.

Had to plug the hole in the Chinese clay pot with some aluminum foil to keep the steam in.

Once the half hour was up we left we brought the boule inside but left it to proof on the counter as we heated up Big Old Betsy to 435 F with our pre-soaked Chinese Sand Clay Pot inside.

It has been while since we baked any bread in it but my wife got an other glazed clay pot bread baker (no lid) from a co worker that was made by Ayers Pottery in Hannibal MO, just down the river from my wife’s hometown of St Louis.  The pot is small but might hold a half a tin of dough – around 500 g.  The pot came with a brochure that lists 101 ways to use the pot and #65 was - fill it with Easter candy.

Once the temperature hit the 435 F mark, I left the pot in the oven for another 15 minutes so the clay could catch up to the oven temperature.  After upending the dough out of the basket onto parchment on a peel, it was slashed T-Rex style and slid into the clay pot then lidded for 20 minutes of steam.

Once the lid came off we turned BOB down to 425 F convection to brown and dry the crust.  5 Minutes later we took it out of the clay pot to finish browning on the bottom stone.  It looked done but didn’t thump done on the bottom so we left it in another 5 minutes before removing it to the cooling rack.

My daughter did make a fabulous avocado chicken salad with walnuts and pepitas with this bread for lunch - delicious!

It did blister, bloom, spring and brown up pretty well but we won’t know what the crumb looks like till after lunch but I really can’t wait to taste the bread wearing Lucy’s headphones and listening to Led Zeppelin or maybe some Neon Trees.  I did get out a frozen hunk of her favorite pumpernickel to compare it too.  She wants me to do a blind taste test to verify it really works.

Lucy's favorite pumpernickel for comparison and the test for her new headphone app.

This week was our anniversary #29 and we celebrated by going with our daughter to the Barrio Queen Restaurant in downtown  Gilbert for their happy hour appetizers, tacos and margaritas.  Their Carnitas en Chili Verde appetizer is killer, the barrio Pollo Con Chorizo tacos were the best of all we sampled - we sampled quite a few and the margaritas were strong and tasty if a bit small.

Pork carnitas fajita quesadillas this time.

In keeping with the Mexican anniversary theme, I made a classic Mexican Pepitas Cake with Mexican chocolate, vanilla and tequila for dessert at home with a cute doily powdered sugar stencil with some French Silk ice cream and whipped cream sides.  This cake is one of my favorites, a good fit for special occasions and healthier than some others.  The crumb came out soft and moist and nit as open as i would have thought but it also wasn't overly sour either. A different sour taste for sure because of the yogurt whey but civil' my daughter loved this bread and knows which side hers is buttered on!

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 All gussied up Pepitas Cake and don't forget that salad