This weekend's baking project comes to you courtesy of pantry leftovers!
So I asked the wife what dried fruit we had on hand. We have cherries in the fridge and raisins in the pantry. The raisins sport a 'best sold by' date of Oct. last year, so I thought it might be best to use those up. Nearby I spied some walnuts. Then I Googled for a recipe and came across this lovely...
Country Sourdough with Walnuts + Raisins
Looks great! The recipe calls for 150g of starter, so I will use daBrownMan's NMNF Starter chart to build up a levain. The closest line on his chart is 160g, so I will either adjust the levain down to 150g or adjust the flour and water in the recipe down by 5g each. Easy peasy.
Did the first levain build, set a timer. Somewhere around 7pm I will mix the dough and give it a few hours on the counter, followed by overnight in the fridge, for tomorrow, we bake.
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of levain because I never get every tiny bit of levain out of the container so don't worry about making a bit more. That looks like a great loaf!
Thanks Danni :)
I'm making my levain in a wide bowl, so I'll probably leave less than a gram in there (I hope)
This evening's goal is to add the water last. Begone, overhydration! lol
Dixon, you're making me hungry. I don't have any starter feeding today. I was at a new Whole Foods in Toronto and went by their bread counter. I thought - I'm not making anything this weekend, I should buy something - but honestly, the loaves were uninspired. I was looking for something exactly like this - walnuts, raisins, sourdough, yum. Good for you. Look forward to the final bake pictures..!! Bake happy.. !
and I can see why you got tempted to give it a whirl!
I'm with Danni in always building a larger levain than called for - although I keep it within 10g usually. I prefer to use mine after it has peaked and fallen for a while, and often retard it again before I use it, so there are not just the losses to the sides of the container but also what the yeast has actually consumed. When I build a 160g levain, I usually end up with no more than 154g able to be transferred to the final dough.
Good for you for trying with the water last instead of the flour, to see how that works for you! You'll have to try Danni's trick of matching the feel of the dough to the feel of your earlobe to see if that makes a good, workable dough for you.
Can't wait to see the result!
also the walnuts and raisins are soaking.
The dough was dry, of course, and so I added *most* of the water. Turned slightly sticky, so I decided to leave well enough alone and patted it down until it was mostly level and covered it. Will add salt and nuts and raisins shortly, do a little folding and then bulk ferment in the fridge overnight.
...very stretchy and putty-like. Not sure if that's good or bad. Currently looks like this, about to go into fridge overnight:
It should be fine.
Almost no rise overnight. Will leave out and push back the baking until later.
...had to leave at 9:30, so back in the fridge. Now back home at 2 pm so time to warm and finish this thing up!
Well, it has finally risen. Recipe calls for 4 stretch and folds 'for strength' - but this dough seems pretty damned strong! Reminds me of silly putty, or taffy.
after folding
Much better result than I expected, both visually and taste-wise. Delicious!
It sure looks like your original thread picture! See bread dough doesn't have to be soup to turn out nice! I definitely have let go of the idea that the higher the hydration, the better. Now I add water till it feels right to me after the autolyse stage. I keep the water to a minimum for the autolyse and put all my add-ins into the autolyse; I just leave out the levain and the salt.
You definitely did justice to the recipe - and got a really nice result. Glad to hear that it tastes as good as it looks!