August 23, 2020 - 12:09am
Sourdough Seed Bread - Hamelman
I was inspired by alfanso making baguettes using Hamelman's Sourdough Seed Bread recipe. His results looked stunning with great crust colour and crumb. Today I made the same recipe into an oblong loaf. Reasonably happy, except I was expecting more volume and more open crumb. Still tasted great. 75% hydration, 25% seeds; sunflower, sesame and flax (linseed). Definitely will make this again, but will extend the final proof. I didn't retard the final proof but gave it 2 1/2 hours at 24C. Ideas welcome.
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I think that for a 75% hydration bread we could perhaps expect a more open crumb. But if you look at David Snyder's bake, which I first referenced before tackling this, it also displays a nice but not particularly open crumb. If that's our only complaint, we won't get a lot of sympathy as everything else, especially the taste, rules. At MTloaf points out, this a Vermont SD with amped up hydration and seeds. But what a difference.
It's another great formula and a beautiful bake.
alan
Nothing to complain about with that bake Gavin, you got great oven spring based on the profile and the combination of ingredients much make it taste amazing.
Alan and Ben, thanks for your feedback. I guess the reduced volume may be attributed to less flour to make way for the 25% seeds. My usual Vermont sourdough is 450 g total flour whereas this seed loaf is 370 g total flours (750 g dough). Something to consider I guess. I checked out David's post and I'm not too far off. I'll give it another attempt.
Cheers,
Gavin.
It's one of my all time favorite recipes and another good one for the toaster. I don't know what edition of Bread you have but I understand that the in 2nd edition he upped the hydration for some of the same recipes. I have had to use additional water to make them work well for me. As someone here suggested I use the metric version in his recipe and just move 2 decimal points over. I did do a blog about it as well which you can find here I have only done a retard of the shaped loaf and that also helps to open up the crumb.
Thanks. I have the 2nd edition now as I gave my 1st well-worn edition to my adult son.
I checked out your blog entry for this bread and liked the increase to 85% hydration. I found that stretch and folds were quite hard as the dough was so resistant to the pull, so I occasionally rested the dough for a minute. Interesting that this bread has no autolyse, everything in and mix. I will definitely retard the final proof.
I can only think in metric here, so I convert everything over and make up a spreadsheet so I can recalculate for a 750-gram dough. It'll be easy to adjust to 85% hydration. My home-made proofing box is set at 24C, so like you, I use 10% inoculation of starter in the final levain as it gives me 12-14 hours to ripen. I make the levain about 5 pm the day before and start the mix at around 7 am.
Thanks for your good comments and practical advice.
Cheers,
Gavin.