Easy-Peasy Pan Bread

I haven’t posted in a while because I haven’t been baking anything new or different. My goals have been more inward-looking: trying to be more creative and to bake by feel a little more, which is definitely outside my comfort zone. Usually the only time I get creative is when I goof something up and have to adjust on the fly. More recently, I’ve embarked on a more practically-oriented side project to devise an easy pan bread that still boasts some flavor complexity. I don’t care for the taste or smell of commercial yeast and my husband feels the same way about sourdough so, naturally, I decided to use both. I have to proceed cautiously with the sourdough because if my husband detects any sour notes, it will turn him off the bread forever. I’m totally winging it on this pan bread so that it will dovetail with my “bake-by-feel” exercises. 

I started with a sourdough bread formula that had a yeast kicker, so my initial efforts were, for all intents and purposes, sourdough breads. After greatly reducing the sourdough component and only slightly increasing the IDY, I was in the ballpark. After some further refinements, I can now mix a fairly effortless dough in the evening, refrigerate it overnight, and bake it up fresh in the morning. I can mix it by hand or mechanically. I’ve been tweaking as I go, and Friday night’s version was the best one so far. It doesn’t taste yeasty or sour, it showed a strong rise and had a moist, open crumb.

FORMULA

AP flour 350g (Ceresota, aka Hecker’s) – 70%

Fresh ground Turkey Red - 75g (milled on the coarser side, about 10 clicks off the finest setting in my Komo) – 15%

Whole Spelt - 75g (Arrowhead Mills) – 15%

Water (body temp) - 400g – 80%

Salt - 10g – 2%

Starter - Let’s call it 3 healthy tablespoonsful. I have not yet bothered to weigh it, only to count the spoonsful. It's a 100% hydration whole rye starter, 5 days since its last refresh. I didn’t stir it down before spooning it out, but it was cold and deflated, so fairly heavy. (I can't really calculate a baker's percentage for this because I didn't weigh it, so just consider this over and above the other ingredients) 

IDY - 2.5g  – 0.5%

MIXING & FERMENTATION

• 30-minute autolyse
• I pressed each spoonful of starter thin between wet hands and laid them next to each other on top of the autolysed dough with the salt and yeast sprinkled between the layers. The layering is akin to Reinhard’s epoxy method, but I then folded it up and pincered it à la Forkish for the final mix. 
• Two or three folds depending how it feels. This time I did two. They were regular stretch & folds because the container had high sides, but no reason why coil folds wouldn't work in a shallower dish. I have also mixed versions of this in the Ankarsrum, so I think any mixing method you prefer would work.
• Bulked on the counter (71°F) till increased in volume about 75% or a little more, about 2 hours
• Loosely shaped, panned (greased), covered with a shower cap, and tucked it into the fridge (37°F) for the night. 
• In the morning, about 7 hours later, it had clearly risen but still had a ways to go, so I left it for another 2½ or 3 hours. It was well-risen at that point, but I was expecting it to have risen more. Nevertheless, I could see some of the bubbles were getting large, so I preheated the oven (about 15 minutes, another thing to love about pan breads) and baked. 

BAKE

40 minutes at 420°F, I de-panned the bread and placed it on the oven rack for 10 minutes to brown the sides. Internal temp after 50 minutes was 210°F. 

I was happy to see that it had good oven spring but chagrined to find a blowout on one side. Upon slicing it, I thought the fermentation looked right, so I now believe it was probably not a blow-out but a misaligned seam. It was a wet, gassy dough shaped for a nine inch pan. I handle it with wet hands so it’s entirely possible the slippery devil rolled over on its way into the pan.

At this point, I’m pretty happy with the bread but wonder whether the starter is making any contribution at all. I suspect not, simply because it doesn't have enough time to do anything. I was hoping the starter would improve the rise and/or improve the flavor... without actually tasting like sourdough. Hmm, putting it like that, the whole notion seems questionable. I’ll press ahead with some test bakes anyway in case they turn out to be instructive, but in the end, I wouldn't be surprised if the starter just goes away.

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UPDATE 12/15/2022: After doing some test bakes, I can say that while I didn't notice much difference in the flavor with or without the starter, my better half did. He does not care for sourdough, but whenever I made this bread without it, he commented that it didn't taste as good. So it would seem that at least for some people, the starter DOES improve the flavor without tasting like sourdough. Go figure!