Honey Oat Porridge Bread with Sesame and Sunflower Seeds

I considered joining in on the community bake but looking through past ideas, I came across a bake that I had adapted from Mutant Space’s recipe. At the time, one of my friends said was one of the best breads she had ever tasted. 

It has a lot of similarities to the community bake loaf as it also uses an oat porridge. The notes in that thread were very helpful. I was very careful to cook the oats on low to retain the creaminess. However, this recipe also has honey, butter, flax, sesame and sunflower seeds. I also used  Einkorn as part of the flour as I have quite a bit of it and I haven’t used it much at all. 

Hopefully it turns out as well as the first time I made it. 

Recipe 

Makes 3 loaves of ~975 g

740 oat porridge 

Porridge

225 g rolled oats

360 g water

90 g honey

75 g butter

Add-ins

75 g raw Sesame seeds

75 g raw Sunflower seeds

Dough

650 g unbleached flour

200 g high extraction Red Fife flour (250 g Red Fife berries)

210 g high extraction Einkorn flour (250 g Einkorn berries)

75 g flax, freshly ground

550 g water

25 g salt

250 g levain (procedure in recipe)

75 g extra water

The afternoon before:

1. Mill the Red Fife and  Einkorn berries and sift to obtain the needed amount of high extraction flours. Place the required amounts in a tub. Save the bran for feeding the Levain and for another use such as bran muffins. Reserve any leftover high extraction flour for feeding the Levain in the evening and the next day. 
2. Add the unbleached flour to the tub. 
3. Grind the flax seeds in a bullet and add to the tub. Cover and set aside.
4. Take 18 g of refrigerated starter and feed it 18 g of filtered water and 18 g bran. Let rise in a warm place. 

The night before:

1. Add the water to the rolled oats and cook on low for about 16 minutes. When the porridge is creamy, add the butter and the honey. Stir well and put into the fridge for the night. This can be done in the morning if you wish.
2. Toast the sesame and sunflower seeds in a dry frying pan or in the oven at 350 F. They are done when lightly golden and fragrant. Reserve.
3. Before going to bed, feed the levain 36 g of water and 36 g high extraction flour. Let that rest in a warm spot overnight.

Dough Making day:

1. Early in the morning, feed the levain 72 g of filtered water and 72 g of high extraction flour/AP flour and let rise 4-5 hours in a warm spot. 
2. Two hours or so before the levain is ready, put 550 g filtered water in a stand mixer’s bowl and add the flours from the tub as well as the porridge.  Mix on the lowest speed until all the flour has been hydrated. This takes a couple of minutes. Autolyse for at least a couple of hours at room temperature. 
3. Once the levain is ready, add the salt and the levain to the bowl. Mix on the lowest speed for a minute to integrate everything, then mix on the next speed for 5 minutes. If the dough is too stiff, add the additional water while mixer is running. I definitely needed the extra water. At the end of the 5 minutes, add the toasted sesame seeds and sunflower seeds and mix til incorporated.
4. Remove dough from bowl and place in a covered tub. Let rest 30 minutes at room temperature (73F). 
5. Do 4 sets of stretches and folds at 30 minute intervals, then let the dough rise for an hour. I normally do another 2sets of folds but life interfered and the dough went into the fridge early. When I got home about 90 minutes later, I gave it another fold and a bit more counter time until I had to go out again, and it went back into the fridge. By the time I got home, the dough was really cold, stiff and had risen about 30%. 
6. Tip the dough out on a bare counter, sprinkle the top with flour and divide into portions of ~975 g. Round out the portions into rounds with a dough scraper and I let it rest almost a couple of hours on the counter letting it warm up. It still felt pretty stiff when I did the final shaping. Hopefully I will be making bread and not bricks in the morning. 
7. Do a final shape by flouring the rounds and flipping the rounds over on a lightly floured counter. Gently stretch the dough out into a circle. Pull and fold the third of the dough closest to you over the middle. Pull the right side and fold over the middle and do the same to the left. Fold the top end to the center patting out any cavities or big bubbles. Finally stretch the two top corners and fold over each other in the middle. Roll the bottom of the dough away from you until the seam is underneath the dough. Cup your hands around the dough and pull towards you, doing this on all sides of the dough to round it off. Finally spin the dough to make as tight boule as you can.
8. Sprinkle half rice/half AP flour in the bannetons. Place the dough seam side down in the bannetons. Cover with plastic bowl cover or shower caps. Let rest for a few minutes on the counter and then put to bed in a cold (38F) fridge for 8-9 hours. I debated letting it proof at room temperature but by this time, it was 2:30 am so in the fridge it went. 

Baking Day

1. The next morning, heat the oven to 475F with the Dutch ovens inside for 45 minutes to an hour. Then take the loaves out of the fridge. The loaves didn’t look quite proofed so I let the first batch warm up on the counter for 45 minutes first. At the same time, I took out the second batch out of the fridge to finish proofing so they spent about an hour an a half on the counter. 
2. Turn out the dough seam side up onto a cornmeal sprinkled counter. Place rounds of parchment paper in the bottom of the pots, and carefully but quickly place the dough seam side up inside. 
3. Cover the pots and bake the loaves at 450 F for 30 minutes, remove the lids, and bake for another 17 minutes at 425 F. Internal temperature should be 205F or more.

Well I was right, these first loaves were definitely underproofed. The first batch ended up with craters and canyons on the surface from the explosive oven spring. 

I should have also read up about Einkorn first. It would have prepared me for a few of its quirks! ?