Country Sourdough Experiment No. 2
Still wanting to see if our very strong 13.3% protein Canadian flours interfere with the open crumb I’m attempting another bake of this formula I’ve thrown together. Instead of 80% strong bread flour, I use 50% strong bread flour, 30% lower protein flour (10% protein), 10% whole red fife and 10% dark rye. 9% prefermented flour is use and this time I’ve lowered the hydration to 75% because the 10% flour isn’t very absorptive of the water.
The dough was built using an overnight saltolyse, mixed with levain using Rubaud kneading. Structure and gluten were built using a strong bench letterfold, a lamination and then 4 coil folds leaving it undisturbed for the final 2 hours or so during bulk fermentation at 80ºF. Bulk ended and final shaping was done at 50% rise in the aliquot jar and left on the counter for an additional 45 minutes of proofing prior to cold retard at 2ºC overnight about 21 hours.
Baked as usual in a dutch oven, preheated at 500ºF then dropped to 450ºF and baked in dutch oven lid on for 20 minutes, lid removed and oven dropped to 420ºF and baked for a further 23 minutes.
Comments
Love your S scoring Benny, and you show it very clearly in the video, thank you for sharing!
Thanks Ilya, the S score is kinda fun and I like the look, although I miss having bunnies when slicing the bread.
was your convection fan on during the uncovered portion of the bake?
And when the fan is on, does your oven lower the temp 20 F behind your back? I've read that some convection ovens automatically do that.
Dave, yes when I bake with the dutch oven or without steam I turn the convection on, I think it evens the heat out. I did have the oven calibrated and I had the technician check the temperature with the convection on and it is correct. If you turn the oven to the preset baking temperature without convection, the temperature is 350ºF. If you turn the convection bake setting to the preset it is 325ºF. However, if you set a temperature, it bakes at that temperature.
Here are some photos of the crumb.
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Every picture is an award winner. Maybe the cooler temperatures does something to your baking skills? If you want to take 'S' another step further in the world of scoring, you might want to try Abel Sierra's "ziggy". Here is my version of it.
So many bunnies, more than half gone now. We had half of them as fried egg, ham and tomato sandwiches for dinner.
I remember ziggy, I love the way it opened up, very cool. I’ll have to try that sometime.
Benny
because for me our local flours aren't all that high protein. By my back of the envelope the total protein of this bread is now around 12.3%. However, the photo still looks like the sort of crumb I see from many North American bakers, can't see that the reduction in protein changed things all that much.
How is the 'eating' of this bread - is the bread any softer because of the use of lower protein flour? Is it as chewy? Crust any different?
Thanks Benny for writing this one up. Always appreciate the attention to detail and the beautiful breads.
Jon
Thanks for your comments Jon, very much appreciated. You’re right the resulting protein is about 12.3 or so. I should have calculated the resulting protein before throwing this together. I should at least have switched the ratios of the AP and the strong bread flours to get the protein down closer to 11%.
I can say that the crumb had a slightly more tender chew that the breads that I have made with the white flour being the strong bread flour. The crust is maybe a bit thinner but not greatly so. Or I should go all the way and use all 10% protein flour with none of the bread flour and keep the whole grain the same. I just worry that it might not have enough structure to stand proud when baked. Only one way to find out.
Benny