Community Bake - Maurizio's Fifty-fifty Whole Wheat Sourdough - Everyone is Welcome

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DanAyo on 9 Jul 2018 at 12:08

It's that time again, this will be our second "Community Bake". The FIRST ONE was a great success! This time we are baking Maurizio's Fifty-fifty Whole Wheat Sourdough. Guess what? As luck would have, today Maurizio celebrates the 5th anniversary of his website, The Perfect Loaf.

Since most bakers are separated by many miles and even different countries, this “community bake” may be the best way to share information and learn together along the way. The idea, for those who want to participate, is that we document our progress with pictures and post. It is suggested that each participant start a new comment to document their progress. As more information and images are available for your bake you can edit that post and append it. We’ll share our success, and just as informative, our failures. During the process we can ask questions, compare results, or offer suggestions. Both expert and novice have a place here.

We plan to start our bake today. We will be following Maurizio's well documented instructions. They can be found here. https://www.theperfectloaf.com/fifty-fifty-whole-wheat-sourdough-bread/

I hope you choose to join in. The more the merrier. Even if you don’t come aboard now you can still post your bake and results at any time in the future. All threads are constantly monitored for recent activity. Be sure, someone will be available to assist you.

Some may prefer to bake small loaves. It seems 500 grams loaves are the choice of many. Below I setup the spreadsheet for 1050 grams of total dough. This would make (2) 500 gram loaves or divide the ingredients weights in half to make a single 500 gram loaf. NOTE - the total dough weight is slightly increased to account for loss. On most of these bakes I choose to omit the Diastatic Malt and they baked well. I know many don't have this ingredient in their kitchens.

Dan
Always remember this, "we learn more from our failures than we do from success".
   Post it all. The good, the bad, and (if you dare) the ugly. 

and lovely to see  your loaf! Looks delicious...

My only suggestion could be that I really let the 50/50 not go too far in bulk maybe 30% and also watch the final proof very carefully...I seem to remember Dab to say 85% or something like that rings a bell...

WW moves rather fast and I think this might have happened here....like you also thought yourself....

I think also I saw one of Maurizio's IG posts where he says he now uses 'stiff' starter for WW to control fast fermentation ....I have not tried that and followed his formula as per community bake but room for thought.....

https://www.instagram.com/p/BldsgIBFx38/?hl=en&taken-by=maurizio   and in comments he states:

"I use a stiff levain when I’m making a dough with lots of whole grain (fresh milled also). I find it helps keep fermentation activity in check. It also adds a lot of flavor!"

Happy baking and lovely that you joined in.... Kat

Thanks for your input. If I make it again, I'm also contemplating dropping the hydration a bit. The other thought I had was if the salt was added at the same time as the levain, would that have had an effect on the result. Not sure about using a stiff starter - I think I've tried it a couple of times but haven't really gotten comfortable with it. I'll check out the links. 

I have also dabbled with a stiff starter but not seen a real difference at the time...

I got into the habit of adding the leaven first and then the salt with more water, if needed. So if hydration is your concern you could do that and add water later with the salt. As WW is more 'thirsty' I am surprised that hydration would be an issue...I normally worry about hydration with my UK flours with Maurizio formulas but interestingly enough it was not an issue with this one and I think it was the WW element.  Happy Baking... 

Hey Hester. The image is small, but from what I can see the bread looks like it came out well. I really like the flavor of this bread. How did yours taste?

Btw - Maurizio’s bake was so well liked, that we’ll be starting a new Community Bake tomorrow. We’ll be doing his Sourdough Baguettes. I’ve already tested it and the baguette has a wonderful flavor with an extremely open crumb. I’ll be baking up my second run of his SD Baguette in the morning will be posting the results. I hope you give it a try. 

Dan

Hope all the cakes and ale haven't gone. Anyway here is my attempt at the 50/50.

I stuck fairly close to Maurizio's recipe, only leaving out the malt and reducing the water content to give me a 77% hydration dough, (including levain) which is about as much as I thought I could handle in this first attempt.

So the recipe used was:

500g home milled Priors wheat grain.

500g Marriages strong white bread flour.

750g water.

21g. salt

150g. Levain (50/50 strong white flour and whole wheat at 100% hyd.).

I mixed the flour, salt and water minus 50g and left it to autolyse for five hours before adding the 150g levain together with the 50g water that had been held back. Then bulk ferment started with stretch & folds every half hour, interrupted by the unexpected arrival of a visitor. Actually it wasn't unexpected,- I had completely forgotten about it......( It is an age related thing!) so only 3 s & f's were completed and a longer than planned rest period followed. Temperature was kept at 78°f  and bulk ended after 3 1/2 hours.

Then dough was divided, pre-shaped, rested for 30 minutes, shaped and then proofed for one hour  on the work surface before being placed in the fridge overnight. Baked next morning in 2 cast iron casserole pots, lids on for 30 minutes then off for further 20 mins. And here is the result.

 

And the crumb

So thank you Dan for setting up this community bake. I have been reading through all the previous bakes and comments with real interest and not a little envy. I am quite pleased with my result though and these loaves are disappearing quickly enough to encourage me to try this 50/50 again. The long autolyse helped to make the dough quite easy to handle and I know that I can increase the hydration a by few percent next time to open up the crumb a little more to achieve a slightly more lacy texture which is what I aim for.

PS.    Must remember not to invite visitors on baking day!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Love the color and blisters. I like Maurizio’s formula and method. IMO, it is a great comprise between all whole grain  and all white flour.

Did you bake them cold; straight out of the frig?

It’s never too late to join any Community Bake. The information remains available and the post are always monitored. I’m glad you joined and had a complete success the first try.

Dan

Yes straight from the fridge. On past bakes I have tried a one hour and two hour warm up with little apparent difference to the end result. Now I sometimes leave the cold dough on the work surface uncovered for the half hour it takes the oven to heat up, hopefully to dry the surface a little to help with scoring. Not sure it does though.

I'd be interested to hear what other FL community bakers do.

Alan

Being newly back to SD baking, I noticed this thread pop up this week and decided to give the recipe a try. What a delicious bread! I made a lot of errors/necessary adjustments to schedule (life! hours in the day! oh my!) - here's a summary and some pics.

Firstly, I made the error of starting too late in the day. So I let my levain kinda double and a bit, but it probably needed another hour or so. (Lesson to self: don't rush the levain.) I did an autolyse with warm water. I read somewhere that you can use honey as a substitute for diastatic malt, so I used 1 TBSP honey in the mix, as well as 2 tbsp olive oil, as I find a little oil goes a long way to helping my breads last a few days without drying out. 

Then, when I got to the bulk ferment, the timing caught up with me - I was about 3 or so stretch and folds in, when I realised it would all get too late at night to fit into the weekday schedule, so I adjusted to do the last of the bulk ferment in the fridge, and then do the proofs in the morning. 

I was curious to see how much rise I'd get in the fridge. Answer: none. Anyway, I took it out again at 5.30 am and divided it so that the two halves would come to room temp more quickly. Let it proof with half-hourly (or so) S&Fs til about 9.30am, feeling altogether clueless about how long to leave it going, then shaped and left to do final proof for about 5 hours, after which it looked well proofed to me. 

Baked as directed. Here are pics of the finished loaves... 

As you can see I did one in a round basket and the other freeform... I prefer the longer oval loaves for slicing and freezing (big family! many sandwiches!) but the baskets make the prettiest ones. Also, my silly small oven was a bit squashed, so the loaves bumped each other, causing soft "open" sides... 

(Question from newbie SD baker... Does this stretchy business on the side indicate something about the proofing? too much? too little?)

Crumb not quite as open as I might have liked, but still passable. The flavour of this bread is really great though! I was super happy with the sweetness added by the autolyse and the honey, and the mild caramel crust. Thanks so much for this recipe all :-)

Where does one get that awesome spreadsheet?? The accountant in me does love a good Excel spreadsheet!

This is the recipe that I've been trying to get good at for a few years. That said, I don't bake sourdough too frequently - maybe 2 or 3 times a year.

I baked with this recipe last month and some neglect towards the end of bulk and perhaps too cavalier with hands dipped in water while doing S&Fs resulted in really overproofed sludge. I could've cried while trying to shape it. When baked up it had the classic signs. So going into a redemption bake last week, I really really needed a win. I decided to drop the hydration a tad to 80%. (Increased bread and whole wheat flours by 25 gms each and decreased water by 20 gms.) I watched everything like a hawk during bulk.

Dough handled well during pre-shape and shaping. Scoring went better than before. And here is the result. Heading in the right direction now I think. Will drop bake temps next time to get a less dark crust.

 

There's a lot of information to mine on this thread. Before I attempt this formula again, I'm going to read through a few times. I'm intrigued by the longer autolyse some mentioned. For the flours that I usually use though, right after mixing my dough looks a lot pulled together than what Maurizio gets in his picture (even with hydration as prescribed). 

I finally fixed my chewy bottom crust problem baking in an enameled Dutch oven. Based on Maurizio's tips, the magic combination for my set up seems to be double layer of parchment and a light sprinkle of semolina in the pot.

SO glad I stumbled across this thread, let alone this haven of sourdough enthusiasts. 

Tonight I decided to stay home from work and its safe to say that as a relative new comer to the sourdough game, this has just filled the past 4 hours for me perfectly! 

Thankyou for all the insight and technique nuances. There's just enough information on here to both blow my mind and light my curiosity to try some things a little differently.

What a great and thriving community, keep up the great bakes people ✌