Hi all! Been a while since my last post; didn't do many breads last month. Mostly pita and naan-breads, Turkish pizza etc.
My sourdough culture had been dormant in the refridgerator for a while, so I decided to refresh it again. After half a day it was getting active again.
I wanted to do a brown sourdough loaf with beer in it. So I took a bottle of "Duvel", a Flemish beer with 8,5 vol% alcohol (330 ml)."Duivel" or "Duvel" means Satan in Dutch.
For a batard and a smaller boule I needed about 1750 grams of dough.
11% whole rye flour
60% whole wheat flour
29% wheat flour
2% salt
70% liquid (which ended up being almost 1:1 beer:water)
This sourdough pizza is topped with tomato sauce, caramelized red onions, sauteed chicken thighs in cubes, goat's cheese and arugula.
280 grams of farina di grano tenero 'tipo 00'
165 grams of water
7 grams of salt
100 grams of 100% hydration sourdough (fed with high gluten bread flour).
This gives a total hydration of 65%.
Mixed all ingredients, allowed half an hour of autolyse. The sourdough was fed two days before and kept in fridge after reaching peak activity.
Expanding on the bread I baked last week, the seeded sourdough loaf, I increased the total hydration to about 73-75%.
This time only sunflower seeds inside the bread, and topped with sesame. Baked at a slightly higher temperature. Could have done with a bit more final proofing, cause the bread had quite some oven spring.
I got the book "How to Bake" by Paul Hollywood for my birthday recently, have been baking some bread from it; I like the sort of breads that are in it, though I don't like the "vagueness" in the recipes. Especially in the sourdough ones. For instance, the amount of hydration of the starter is not even mentioned. With my 100% hydration starter, the recipe below has a total hydration of 71,4%. Which I do not find that very high, considering the original recipe uses part whole wheat flour. And that is with the maximum amount of suggested water
I was looking at my stock of flours, and noticed some opened whole wheat bags, so I decided to use those and empty them out.
So I made a recipe in baker's percentages, intending to add a small amount of sourdoughstarter.
35% Whole wheat flour
35% Whole spelt flour
30% Wheat flour
70% Water
2% Salt
calculated for an intended dough weight of 1 kg this gives;
205 grams of whole wheat flour, 205 grams of whole spelt flour, 175 grams of wheat flour, 410 grams of water and 12 grams of salt.
So I wanted to try a no-knead bread again; Just very plain and simple. Just white wheat flour, water, salt and some yeast.
1 kg total dough weight, 70% hydration. About a 1/4 tsp of IDY and 12 grams of salt.
Just mixed it all together and left for a night. Then did some S&F and left to proof. First time in an oval banneton, second time in a round banneton (though that one was a bit too big for the amount of dough).
After proofing I turned on a shooter, slashed and baked at 250 degrees C.
With mother's day at hand I decided to give her a bread-baking starterset from weekendbakery.com - a 750 gram round cane banneton, some flour, a mixing spatula, a lame, and a doughscraper, yeast and a recipe. Of course, that was the perfect excuse to order some more supplies for myself. Namely a 1 kg oval cane banneton, two 750 gram bannetons out of pressed wood material, round and oval and a lame for myself and a dough scraper.
So after the low yeast version I baked a while ago, I baked some more of those.
Then I wanted to use my own sourdough culture to bake that bread.
I had some trouble getting the hydration right, because I feel like the use of baker's percentage is a bit harder when using a sourdough (another source of flour and water) to aim for a certain hydration.
I used
300 grams whole wheat flour (50%)
300 grams white flour (50%) \
For this bread I took 300 grams of whole wheat flour and mixed it with 300 grams of water and 1/8 tsp of instant yeast.
That was at midnight. Next morning I added 280 grams of flour, 1 tsp salt, some pumpkinseeds and some flax seeds. Also enough water to make the hydration 75%. Gave it a stir and then kneaded with mixer. Let rise for 1,5 hours. Then shaped into boule. Proofed for 2 hours in banneton. Baked for 50 minutes at 190 celsius with steam.
