Benito's blog

I’ve been looking for purple sweet potatoes to make an interesting bread for months without any luck, so I finally decided I would try it with regular orange sweet potatoes.  Yesterday after having roasted my sweet potato and with the levain build going I decided to go for a walk to Chinatown where I haven’t been recently.  I went very early in the morning well before it gets busy at all.  The first grocer I went to had a ton of purple sweet potatoes so I bough a few and next week I think I will use it for a sourdough bread.

We are all seeing how flour is harder to come by lately with the pandemic and everyone baking.  So, when I went to one of my go to places for organic flours here in Toronto I picked up more than I usually do including some Einkorn which I’ve never tasted or baked with on a whim.  I then found an instagram post of Kirsten’s Full Proof Baking that had some einkorn in it and decided to give it a go.

100% hydration levain - 1:1:1 6 hours @ 78ºF 

Levain need 97 g 100% hydration

40 g starter

40 g water

40 g whole wheat flour 

I’m really sorry if I’m boring you guys, but I’m learning a lot as I repeatedly bake the same recipe.  I did this with Maurizio’s Beginner Sourdough and then Kirsten’s basic sourdough and now this 50% whole grain sourdough.  Up until now I hadn’t done any sourdough with this high a whole grain percentage, prior to this my 40% was a flat pancake.  However, after learning a few things in particular lamination when we did the CB with Kirsten, I feel that I’m getting a better handle on building structure.

I’m still trying to hit the sweet spot on this recipe from Maurizio’s The Perfect Loaf.  I’ve posted the recipe that I followed two blog posts earlier.  

I didn’t extend the bulk fermentation this time as I believed that my starter was more active now than for the first bake which I felt was underproofed.  After final shaping I did leave the dough in the banneton on the counter for 30 mins before placing it in my 3ºC refrigerator for its cold retard overnight.

This was my second try baking this recipe from The Perfect Loaf.  The first bake was good especially the outward appearance but I felt that the crumb was a bit tight in places indicating that it was a bit underproofed.  This time I pushed the bulk fermentation another 30 mins and after final shaping left the dough in the banneton at room temperature for 30 minutes before putting it in the fridge.  I also increased the hydration to 84%.

I had another go at this bake, but made a few mistakes right at the start.  Rather than using the recommended 214 g of bread flour and 109 g of water for the final dough, I accidentally use 321 g bread flour and 243 g of water which I reduced to 236 from the total formula column, yikes.  Other changes I made include reducing the soaker water to 150 g.

I’ve been wanting to do a fruit and nut sourdough for sometime and decided my first bake of the year would be that time.  I’ve made raisin walnut commercially yeasted bread in the past so wanted to do something different, so chose cranberry walnut.  I started out thinking that would be follow Maurizio’s cranberry walnut sourdough recipe, but then got intimadated by his 88% hydration and also wanted to try lamination again.  So I sort os used his beginner sourdough recipe 78% hydration and added 10% dried cranberries and 10% lightly toasted walnuts.

I baked Maurizio’s sourdough Pain de Mie today.

Based on his recipe and recommendations I made a 700 g dough to fit in my 8.5” x 4.5” loaf pan, however, it came out rather small, I’d say it could easily have been 800 go for that size.

Anyhow, as per his recipe it is all white flour, 12% butter unsalted, 7% honey, 22% milk, 48% water, and 2% salt.