Country Sourdough with Egg
I’ve made my country sourdough recipe numerous times in the past, but I’m always tinkering with my formulas. This time I employed both a stiff sweet levain (I didn’t want this bread to be sour) and I also added an egg. The addition of the egg is said to improve oven spring and may help with achieving a thinner crispier crust given the additional fat. An egg is approximately 74% water so if you’re adding an egg to one of your formulas reduce the hydration by 74% of the weight of the egg that you add assuming you wish to maintain the hydration.
Overnight levain
15 g starter + 21 g brown sugar + 27 g water + 45 g whole wheat flour
Ferment 78°F overnight
In the morning mix 1 lg egg and 324 g water. Add salt and all the stiff sweet levain. Breakdown and attempt to dissolve the levain.
Add whole wheat and whole rye flours. Then finally add bread flour and mix until no dry flour remains. Measure pH
Fermentolyse for 20 to 30 mins.
Knead dough well until at least moderate gluten development, can use French folds or stand mixer.
Do a bench letter fold. Extract aliquot jar doughs one for rise and one for pH.
Every 30 mins thereafter do coil folds until the dough is strong and holds its shape well.
Rest for the remainder of bulk until an aliquot jar rise of 40-50% the shape the dough. Follow the pH to ensure that the pH isn’t falling too much allowing gluten degradation.
Once shaped place in banneton. Allow further bench proofing until rise of 80-90% before either baking or overnight cold retard.
Pre-heat oven to 500°F with cast iron skillet in the oven and set up for open steam baking.
30 mins prior to baking, pour 1 L of boiling water into metal loaf pan with Sylvia towel and place on baking steel on the lowest rack of the oven.
Once oven reaches 500ºF turn dough out of banneton, brush excess rice flour off, score and then brush with water. Transfer to oven. Pour 250 mL of boiling water into the cast iron skillet on a high shelf, high enough that the dough have fully bloom. Drop temperature to 450ºF and bake with steam for 25 mins. Then vent oven and remove all steaming gear and drop temperature to 425ºF. Bake for another 25-30 mins rotating as needed.
The stiff sweet levain did create a less acid dough. The dough started with a pH of 5.88 after mixing which is quite high for a dough with so little whole grain. At the time of cold retard the pH had fallen to only 5.34. Typically I would see a fall of between 1.1 to 1.3 at this point.
Comments
Really nice Benny. Just a perfect bloom on this one and your decorative scoring really turned out nice. Do you think the egg had an impact or do you think the lower acidity in the dough kept it looser?
I really should change just one variable at a time, I know better but I wanted to try out both the egg as well as the stiff sweet starter yesterday. I’m not mad as the oven spring unless of course it is from under-fermentation. What I’m hoping is that the lower acidity allowed the fermentation to go further to allow more oven spring and bloom and thus a more open crumb. I’m also hoping that the egg helps with crumb softness and thinner crispy crust.
Fingers crossed. Sometimes changing multiple things gets you where you need to go faster. At least that’s what I tell myself every time I do it. 😁
This looks to be a very puffed-up loaf, can't wait to see the crumb. Look at that starter......
Thank you Ming, I’m hoping for an open crumb on this. I haven’t baked this type of bread with little whole grain in some time so applied what I think should allow a good open crumb. I’m a bit concerned with the pointiness of the loaf as something that indicates a huge under fermentation bubble in the loaf.
Benny
I’ve been concentrating only on rye so I think I will do something lighter next bake. I used Barton Mills Sonora and their yellow dent corn milled both myself , in my cornbread recipe that I’ve baked for decades. Really impressed with the flavor and texture. Will definitely be using the Sonora as my “ white” go to flour on other bakes.
You do beautiful scoring!
Thank you Caroline, you’re very kind to say that about my scoring! I’ve not seen Sonora in Toronto yet, maybe once I’m retired and spending more months in winter in Florida I will get a chance to try these cool grains out.
Benny
I can’t say I miss work. Nursing was a passion but as often happens it burned out after 16 yrs. It was a second career for me. I’m glad you so enjoy Florida, you are on the East coast? Ft Lauderdale area?
Yes Fort Lauderdale, this is how I was able to get together with Alfanso three times now over two visits this fall/winter. Do you spend any time down in that part of Florida Caroline?
Medicine is my first career/profession and I love it. However, despite that love, I have to admit that I am feeling more and more burnt out with time. I’ve been an MD for 30 years now.
30 yrs. I was an opera singer and taught piano and voice after my children came along. Then my Mom got sick and I cared for her and her Home Health RN’s said I had a gift and should go back to school. So I did! What a career change.
We go to the Venice Beach area 30 min South of Sarasota.I love the Gulf having grown up in New Orleans and always going to Miss. and Panama City in the 60’s. Since we moved to VA from AL 5 yrs ago it’s a much bigger trip to get to FL. We rented a house last year for all of April and camped our way down for 10 days before the rental. This year we have a different larger home on a small lake that connects to the Gulf also still in Venice Beach a mile from the beach and the bicycle trails we love. We won’t spend any time camping this trip as we are babysitting the grands in Atlanta area before we go on to FL.
I’m not sure how much longer we will do this as the prices are really insane but still way less than a motel. And so much nice space 3 bedroom 2 bath and huge lanai etc. great privacy . We shall see… trying to live one day at a time…🙏
Wow I didn’t know you were an opera singer and musician. I play violin, and used to play viola and piano. If I was more gifted I actually wanted to be a professional violinist, however, I really didn’t have the gift to be successful at that. Also my social anxiety about performing in front of people always got the best of me. Good thing I went into medicine instead of music. Wish I knew about beta blockers way back then, I would have been a much better soloist than I was.
Maybe next winter if things are better than this current one we can do a TFL bakers meet up in Florida! Wouldn’t that be fun. We can invade Alan’s home and bake together.
Benny
In 1982 when my daughter was born. I had been teaching all through the early 70’s and continued till it was too much with 3 children in the house and after school activities etc.
I would love it if we could meet up! I had a group of friends in Manhattan NY and we met through a web group and used to get together several times a year when I would be up there house sitting for my brother. All things change though and only one remains close and we email frequently but haven’t had a meet up since 2013! Hard to believe it’s been that long.
Completely hijacked this thread 🤦♀️😳. We will talk soon .
Well I misjudged fermentation on this one as it is under fermented. Oh well tasty nonetheless but no discernible egg flavor. The egg did help create a thinner crust though so it is something worth trying again.
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Your open crumb standards must be very high, if I had a crumb like this with my bread, I would brag about it in the whole village. Nice work Doc.
Thank you Ming, some of the “open” crumb are tunnels so not great.
I don't see tunnels, you are too honest Benny :).
The egg sure gave the the crust a nice color and it looks like it created more volume. I would say the crumb looks pretty open considering the coagulating properties of the egg. I don't see the signs of under fermentation but with the levain you are using it I guess it would allow for more development. I am planning on trying your sweet levain in one of my next bakes.
Don
I look forward to your bake with a stiff sweet levain Dan. I haven’t tested to determine what concentration of sugar is needed but my levains have been about 77% sugar by weight of the water and 60% hydration. The amount of sugar per gram of water is what is important rather than bakers percentage.