first fresh fruit loaves of the season
I like the idea of baking fruit-based bread using the fermented fruit as the leavening. I started with 200g of cherries.
I pureed them with 40g of water and a bit of honey and let them ferment for 3 days until the mixture smelled quite alcoholic and bubbled noisily. I then added a bit more water so I'd have a reasonable amount of dough, a bit more honey for flavour, and enough flour to get to a reasonable consistency. I let it ferment overnight with a couple of turns along the way.
This morning it was ready to go. The dough has a marked cherry colour. They took considerably longer to proof than my regular SD.
The crumb is a bit close, but the flavour is nice. Next time I'll forgo adding any more water and just use more cherries in the beginning to maximize the cherry flavour. I think it would be nice to rough-cut some cherries into the ferment as well as the pureed cherries. I baked this batch at 415 for 30 minutes.
The crust colour from the cherries and the honey I think it really beautiful and the cherry coloured inside is unusual and appealing as well.
A friend is bringing some cherries today so I can try again.
:-Paul
Fantastic.
Jeff
Super looking SD. Great job. Dave
Very nice! Thank you for sharing!
Looks like a perfect moist crumb. Got a good rise from the dough. What kind of cherries? Sour? So you want to try more cherry flavor....hmmm... how about drying some of the pitted cherries and then add later to the puree? Or making a cherry jam to go with it?
I sure wish my husband and I were served your bread instead of the flat black bread wedges offered at a particular Italian restaurant. It was so black (octopus ink?) I didn't even want to try it. That was the kind of black bread I can easily do without. I know "no guts, no glory" but it just turned my stomach looking at it. I don't think it had any crust color.
I like looking at your rich loaves!
Mini
Hi Mini,
Thanks. I was really pleased with the colour as well. Adding dried cherries sounds like an interesting idea. I have another load fermenting as we type. I used a lot more cherries and didn't add any water and didn't pureed them nearly as finely. We'll see what that does.
That black bread sounds odd. I wonder how they got it so black? charcoal? Petroeum products are not generally appetizing.
:-Paul