Hello!
First post to this forum. Been baking sourdough for about 1 year.
Wanted peoples opinion on flours and ways to optimize recipe for heritage wheat varieties to get better oven spring. Used same recipe with conventional store bought flour vs "artisanal" flour and was surprised by my results. Prefer the more complex flavor of the anson mill loaf (though it is less presentable). Thoughts?
Recipe:
100 gm starter (active fed with respective flour in the recipe)
375 gm water
425 gm white bread flour (Bobs red mill vs anson mills bread flour)
50 gm wheat flour (Trader Joes vs Anson Mills Red Fife)
25 gm buckwheat (same in both recipes)
25 gm rye (same in both recipes)
45 minute autolyse, 9 gm salt, 4 hour bulk ferment with stretch and fold every 30 minutes, shape and overnight retard in refrigerator prior to baking.
Here are the results - right is the store bought flours (better spring), left is the artisanal flours (more disc shaped).
New Baker, you wrote, “ Here are the results - right is the store bought flours (better spring), left is the artisanal flours (more disc shaped).”
Isn’t it the other way around? Left is store bought flours.
IMO, the quarter cut crumb shot is super nice and airy. I like it a lot.
The quantity and also the quality of each flour’s gluten could have a major affect on the finished product.
Danny
Correct.
Sorry for the confusion.
I suspect it's the gluten content as well...any way to compensate for that (aside from using a different flour)? Longer bulk ferment?
Thanks!
When I look again, the crumb is so nice using the heritage flours, I’d give the test another go, but this time shape both as batards.
Your scoring and different shaping may have skewed the results. I bet they did...
How large are your doughs? How much do they weigh?
Heritage varieties of wheat and the modern hybridized commercial varieties of wheat are very different breeds.
"Variety" as I'm using here is a "breed" or sub-species, or even more refinement sub-sub-species, like differing breeds of animals of the same species, like cats, dogs, cattle, etc
it's natural for flour from those widely different varieties to require different formulas and procedures, when seeking similar results from two different types/varieties/breeds of wheat.
There are literally hundreds of varieties of wheat. And, each field, and each harvest can produce slightly different product even when using the exact same variety of wheat. Place and time are both variables.
Modern commercial mills go to great lengths to _blend_ wheat from different varieties and farms so as to produce a product that is extremely consistent from year to year and batch to batch. Otherwise, people could not use the exact same recipe year to year. Gold Medal AP flour would not be the same year to year. Or King Arthur Bread flour would not be the same year to year.
So, if a "boutique" mill uses a single variety, and doesn't fine tune or adjust year to year with blending, not only is that variety different from the major mills, it _can't_ be the same as the major mills. And it likely can't even be consistent year to year, and therefore some minor adjustments by the baker will always be needed. Which is what good bakers have done since time immemorial: adjusted water, leaven, times, temperatures as required.