Witchy Potato 6 Grain Sourdough with Seeds and Nuts

After 2 weeks of making new weird stuff; a witch yeast and a cooked potato starter, Lucy decided to combine them with our rye sour starter to make a triple levain bread quite unlike many other triple levain breads usually available everywhere else.

 My daughter’s fiancé was visiting and he said, out of all of our breads he has tasted the past couple of years, he likes the seedy, sour multigrain ones the best.  So Lucy decided to send him back to Denver with a seedy and nutty triple levain something or other bread along with a hunk of the witchy, figgy pistachio and another hunk of the potato white bread.

We took 6 g or each of the starters and combined them with 72 g of whole six grain flour that was comprised of equal amounts of rye, wheat, spelt, oat, Kamut and barley with equal amounts of water over 3 builds of 2, 3 and 3 hours each.  The triple levain actually tripled at the end of 8 hours – a very spunky mix even if warmed on a heating pad at exactly 82.6 F.   It ended up bit over 18% prefermented flour all of it whole grains.

I know it was exactly that temperature because my daughter’s fiancé got me a nifty point and shoot infrared thermometer for Christmas to go along with the dehydrator from last year.  We had quite a time taking the temperature of everything in shooting distance and I mean everything!

This guy is a keeper for those two things alone.  I should have made some sprouted grain bread for him to see the dehydrator in action but there wasn’t an extra day available to do so.  At least the other two breads he is going home with do have sprouted grains.

I didn’t want him to think I wasn’t using the dehydrator as often as possible so I let him have a taste of my latest batch of beef jerky I have stashed away so no one can find it – especially Lucy who is now addicted to the stuff for some reason.

Picture with flash

We did our usual 1 hour autolyze of the dough flour and water with the salt sprinkled on top and did 3 sets of slap and folds of 30 laps each once the triple levain hit the mix.  We then did 3 sets of stretch and folds incorporating the chopped flax, pepitas and sunflower seeds with the pecans and walnuts on the first set of S&F’s.  All dough manipulations were done on 30 minute intervals.

We then pre-shaped the dough, final shaped it, placed it in a rice floured oval basket and bagged it before placing it on a 83 F heating pad for 1 hour before retarding it in the fridge for 12 more hours.  It didn’t do much in the fridge so once it came out of the fridge we put it on the heating pad for 4 ½ hours before unmolding slashing and sliding it into the combo cooker preheated to 450 F for 18 minutes of covered steam.

My daughter has to have Thai Seafood Curry when she is home.

Once the lid came off we turned the oven down to 425 F convection and continued baking for 5 more minutes before removing it from the cooker to let it finish baking on the stone 15 more minutes.  It bloomed, blistered and sprang a bit under steam and browned OK without it.  Nothing to write home about without it.  We will have to see what the crumb looks like once it cools down for slicing.

This is a tasty bread for sure.  Seedy and nutty with that very cool purple tinge from the walnuts.  A soft, moist and fairly open crumb for a bread with near 20% whole grains and 40% seeds and nuts.  The sour came through too.  A very nice bread overall that makes some killer toast.