Todays Steel Cut Oat Sourdough

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Today/yesterday I made some sourdough with steel cut oats and a touch of whole wheat. It came out so darn good.

Yesterday I made the dough with 600g bread flour 30g ww flour, 157g chef (100% hydration), 467g water, 60g oats (60g is the dry weight I soaked em for two hours) and 13G salt. 

First I combined the water and the chef then added the two to the flour/oat mixture, after incorporating everything I let it autolyse for 45 minutes, that completed I gave it a stretch and fold, spread the salt on the counter and gave it a good set of slap and folds, allowing it to grab some of the salt with each slap. Then I let it ferment at our albeit quite cool room temp for around two hour and I gave it a stretch and fold roughly every forty minutes. Then I tossed it in the fridge and gave it a gentle S&F at the one hour mark and the twoish hour mark. 

This morning I removed it from the fridge and set it in a very very conservatively preheated oven to warm up for two or so hours maybe a bit more. (its so cold in my house) then I shaped it and proofed it at room temp for around two hours. then into the oven it went, preheated to 500 and steamed, then after a few minutes down to 470 then after 10 minutes down to 465 for the remainder of the bake!

This looks fantastic and sounds delicious.  I'd like to give it a try.  May I ask - after soaking the 60 g. of steel cut oats for 2 hours, do you drain them or have they absorbed all the water?

I slowly added boiling water to the dry oats, I continued adding and stirring until it looked like the dry oats were about to be drowned, then twenty or thirty minutes later I added just a touch more water, in the end I didn't have to drain them, though I totally would of if they hadn't taken it all.

I tried a WW/Oat flour a while ago and a brick was the result, with a very gummy, unedible crumb. The funny thing is that I left it somewhere on the kitchen counter & forgot all about it (I'm a very messy cook) ... until a few days ago. It was in a plastic bag. Not a thing was growing on it. My partner teased me about it saying, see, even the bugs do not want to eat "that thing"! Still, that was interesting.

Anyway, now I have switched to a combination of unbleached bread flour, a few grams of whole wheat & dark rye already present in my chef, to which I am adding just under 3% of wheat bran (of total flour weight), 10% oat bran (also of total flour weight) soaked overnight & ground before adding to the dough. I am experimenting here. The first loaf I made with that combination did not come out alright although it was an improvement on the ww/oat flour one. I goofed with the water, failing to take into account the amount that I had used for the soaker. I ended up with an almost batter-like dough, which I baked nonetheless. It was nice but not what I was looking for. I have adjusted my spreadsheet accordingly and will be baking another one this coming week. I hope it turns out as nicely as yours, even with the differences in flour composition.

We are moving thisone up to next Friday's bake just so I can prove to my apprentice that she cannot get a crumb even remotely close to yours .....Well Done.  We would vote this the best crumb in 2013 if it wasn't 2014 - she also isn't very good with numbers it seems.  Just perfect and beautiful

Happy Bakign WS.

Very nice looking bread and I would bet they taste great to!

I'v just set a batch to autolyse, this time with 3% more WW and 5% Rye. I think the aroma will benefit enormously!

Great bread, and the boule is a real beauty.

Karin