Bulgur and Freekeh

5pm scald: 125 g bulgur, 210 g water, 3 g salt

6pm chill the scald

7pm autolyze: the scald, 270 g king arthur bread flour, 155 g water

9pm levain: 60 g 100% starter, 85 g bread flour, 85 g water

9pm refrigerate autolyze

7am take autolyze out of frige

8:30am knead levain and 8 g salt into autolyze

9am - 11:30am six sets of stretch and folds

3pm shape into banneton

6:30pm bake covered

6:50pm uncover

7:30pm done

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Crumb was so gooey I worried. I tried flopping the dough from the banneton into the cast iron, instead of placing the cast iron on top of the banneton and flipping it over. The banneton has been getting burnt on the top from the latter. It flopped a little off-kilter. The serrated knife for scoring isn't great, I have to cut multiple times over the same place to get a deep score, and it stretches the dough around.

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9pm scald 200 g freekeh with 600 g boiling water and 4 g salt (not all of it was used for bread)

9pm chill scald

9pm mix levain 50 g starter 60 g water 60 g bob's red mill whole wheat flour

9pm mix autolyze 350 g king arthur bread flour, 220 g water

8:30am knead together autolyze and levain, then knead in 9 g salt and 250 g freekeh scald

9:00am S&F

9:30am S&F

10:00am S&F

10:30am S&F

11:00am S&F

1:30pm S&F

3:00pm shape

6:45pm bake covered

7:05pm uncover

7:45pm done

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There probably don't need to be that many stretch and folds, and they don't need to be so close together during a six and a half hour bulk ferment.

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All the pictures of beautiful banneton patterns on here have been making me jealous, so I thought I must have been overdoing it with flour. I just did a handful of semolina this time, and the dough stuck, strangely not to the bottom but to two points halfway up the sides. Once out onto the peel, it spread in the direction of the sticking points, so I scored it with parallel cuts to expand it in the other direction. By that time it had already spread beyond the size of the cast iron. This was the first time I've used a peel as an intermediary between banneton and cast iron, and it will be the last. Slipping it off the peel caused the dough to bunch up against one side of the pan, where it burnt.

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The green wheat taste of freekeh is interesting. It has a bit of astringency. Dry, it smelled like grain moths to me, but because it was a newly opened package, I thought I had probably been erroneously associating the smell of whole wheat with grain moths. Now I'm not so sure, though there aren't any moths or larvae in the freekeh.