11 Sprouted Grain Sourdough with Dried Cherries, Pecans and Pepitas

Lucy wanted to get back to her roots this week and she wanted to use something that has been on her pantry for a while collecting dust.  She was particularly upset about environmentalists saying that pets are totally not necessary and all they do is contribute greatly to global warming for no justifiable reason.

She really was really ticked off that pets, unlike livestock, don’t feed people, outside of North Korea, so they have no environmental redeeming quality at all – nada – zero.  So, she wanted to get back in her comfort zone before environmentalist rounded up all the pets and shipped them off to North Korea to await their environmental payback from the truly hungry.

I told her that I had heard that large pets like horses and St Bernard’s would be the first to go so she had at least a couple of more weeks of happy time before she was ground up into people food that the poor children of North Korea need so badly.  Knowing that her bread ingredient hoarding time was limited, she finally coughed up some of her more expensive add ins like dried cherries and pecans.  Next week I might get some gold foil and foie gras!

Back to this week’s bake.  Lucy specified 11 sprouted grains that amounted to 50% of the flour in the mix with the rest being Albertson’s bread flour – no less expensive LaFama AP this week.  The 11 sprouted grains were the usual suspects; red and white wheat. buckwheat, barley, oat, spelt, rye, emmer, einkorn, Kamut and quinoa.

The 100% hydration, 2 stage, 12 hour levain was made from 10 g of NMNF starter with the bran from the sprouted grains being the first stage.  The 2nd stage was the HE sprouted 11 grain.  Total pre-fermented flour came in at 12%.  The levain was not retarded this time but the dough flour was autolysed for 45 minutes with enough water to get the overall hydration up to 85% - and the PH sea salt sprinkled on top.

Once everything came together we did our usual 3 sets of Slap and folds and 3 sets of stretch and folds on 30 minute intervals with the add ins going in during the 1 set of stretch and folds.  The dough was pre shaped and shaped into an oval and placed in a rice floured basket and into the frode for a 12 hour retard.

When the dough came out of the fridge the next day, we let it sit on the counter for 1 hour before heating up the oven to 500 F with the combo cooker inside.  When the oven was at temperature plus 15 minutes.  We unmolded the dough onto parchment on a peel slashed it twice and slid into the combo cooker for 18 minutes of steam after turning the oven down to 460 F.

The lid came off and the bread was baked for 6 more minutes at 425 F convection.  The bread was then taken off the bottom if the CC and placed on the bottom stone for 11 more minutes of baking.  The bread read 207.5 F when it was removed to the cooling rack.

It bloomed, browned and sprang well enough but we will have to wait on the crumb shot till later.  The cherries really come through with a bit of tartness to go with the background.  Very soft moist and fairly open for a bread like this one.   Just delicious.  Made some fine toast with a schmear of salmon, onion cream cheese.  Have another salad with this fine loaf of bread

Formula

Levain–100% hydration, 2 stage, 12 % pre-fermented 11 sprouted flour, bran levain using 10m g of NMNF starter

Dough

38% HE 11 grain sprouted grain flour

50% Albertson’s bread flour

Water to bring the overall hydration to 85%

2% PH sea salt

12.5% Dried Cherries

10.4% Pepitas

10.4% Pecans