Sourdough corn bread

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Sourdough corn bread

I had half a bag of fine cornmeal left in my pantry, and thought of making some corn bread. I consulted Ian's 2014 post on Broa de Milho before baking, and decided to use rye (10%), cornmeal (40%) and bread flour (50%).

I made a 90% hydration levain with the rye and cornmeal the night before and left it to ferment for 12 hours at RT 19 degrees. I then mixed the levain with salt, water and bread flour to make a 75% hydration dough of 700g. This was bulk fermented for 3 hours, proofed for 1 hour and then baked at 220 degrees for 35 mins.

The dough was extremely sticky to handle. I used a spatula to do a couple of folds during BF. 

This went really quickly - faster than my usual doughs with 50% levain - and doubled in 3 hours. 

The bread tastes slightly sweet due to the corn, but most of all, it tastes quite sour! I've not had such sour bread in a very long time. The texture is excellent - I can slice it really thin. The crust really does taste like cornflakes!!!

 

 

Yes it did end up with a more open crumb than I expected, especially given how the dough was behaving throughout. The rather sour tang and unique crumb turned out to be very popular with the family. Very tasty, all gone today.