Aug 17-18: Play time! Eclipse Loaves

  With Mini Oven’s Eclipse Bread challenge in mind, and the need to get my “mother” durum starter built back up, I started last week by pulling out 10g each of my 65% hydration rye and durum starters and starting with 3-stage levain builds, getting them both up to 80% hydration, and shooting for about 270g total of each levain.

 The rye (which had the “mother’ re-built the previous week) was more than perky, and had doubled less than 3 hours after the first feed.  The durum showed its age, and just barely doubled in 8 hours – definitely time for the “mother” to be built back up!

 The first loaf that I thought of to go with the Eclipse Challenge would be my “darkness” impression.  I wanted a really moist and dark bread, heavy on the rye, but still enough of a “white” bread that my husband would enjoy it, too (he’s not as much of a fan of the dark stuff as I am).  For the moistness and darkness, I decided on a porridge with lots of chocolate rye malt, and I used a mix of dark brewed coffee and Earl Grey tea for the liquid (an accidental mixture made by my husband helpfully saving some left-over coffee for me to have as iced coffee --- but adding it in to the container in the fridge that I used for left-over tea).  I added in some sour cream and mashed bananas to keep the whole thing very soft, and just a touch of millet to be the “stars” in the darkness.

 It is still far too warm here (was 30 deg C that day), and this dough ended up as dementedly sticky.  It actually got worse as it fermented, so for the first time ever I ended up adding a bit more flour (75g total) and doing 300 slap-and-folds to incorporate it about 2 hours in to the ferment. 

 That was still not enough to make it shape-able, so I bunged it in to a heavily buttered tin. 

While it was a devilish dough to work with, the result is moist and tender and delicious --- so worth it!

The next part of the bake was also intended for the Eclipse challenge --- a bright and sunny yellow dough (durum mixed with corn flour and a cornmeal porridge) with a streak of blueberry raspberry “moon shadow” running through it.

 Well – I had intended on doing 100% whole grain, but the dough just didn’t want to hold together after I added the levain.  I just didn't have enough "dough" to hold the amount of cornmeal porridge, so I ended up grabbing a couple of hundred grams of the already mixed dough from our sandwich loaf and incorporating it in order to get some kind of cohesion.  That did help, but the dough stayed really soft throughout fermentation, and didn’t seem to want to hold together after being flattened and rolled around the fillings.  I proofed it on a parchment covered baking sheet, covered with a damp towel, and tossed it in to the oven quite under-proofed in the hope that it would stay together. 

 Well, it’s not pretty, but it is tasty --- and it did work out with the banana rye for the look that I had in mind for the Eclipse Challenge.

Bon appétit and keep baking happy!