PiPs Olive & Herb Sourdough
As part of my search for some new formulas to work with (with an eye toward the holidays), I spent some time perusing PiPs blog posts. If you haven't had the time to look through his content, I have to say, I could spend a month or two just baking some of the absolutely delicious looking breads that he presented here! Lovely stuff!
Anyway, the Olive & Herb sourdough that he shared in his blog looked like a great option to play with. I followed the formula very closely, making a minor adjustment to 72% hydration, which I tend to prefer. My Whole Wheat flour was freshly milled hard white winter wheat from Central Milling, and I used a 50/50 mix of CM Organic AP, and CM High Mountain ("bread") flours. I wasn't able to get to Whole Foods, where they have my preferred olives in their olive bar, so the olives I used for this bake were brined Castrellano olives from the local grocery. As it turned out, they weren't quite as briny as usual, so my salt was a little low in the finished product.
Everything got mixed/developed in my Ankarsrum. After about 12 minutes of development, things looked pretty good, so I added in the olives bit by bit to get them incorporated. Interestingly, the olives didn't mix in quite as well as I had expected, and they seemed to want to crowd the roller in my Ank. After a total of 15 minutes in the mixer, I did a bit of hand kneading/manipulation to get the olives as well dispersed as I could.
Did about 3 hours of bulk @ 79°F in my XL proofing setup (large cooler, seedling mat, and an Inkbird controller), then shaped and dropped in the fridge overnight (after another hour in the proofer.) When I baked loaf #1 in the morning, it was a bit explosive in its oven spring, which led me to believe that it may have been a bit under proofed. I left loaf #2 to sit in the proofer again at 75°F for about 3 hours and then baked it. Not bad, but I feel like I missed my window in there somewhere! :) The taste is fantastic (as mentioned, a bit low on salt), the crumb is what I like as it holds onto things like butter better, and I look forward to baking this one again.
Oh, and here's the "XL Proofer" :)
Comments
That loaf looks and sounds delicious Rich! I’d love a slice of that for lunch today.
Benny
It's a very tasty bread, for sure! With some tweaks to match up with my starter and process better, it will be a sure-fire winner!
I'm toasting some now for my breakfast while I watch the levain for Holiday Cranberry 2.0 develop! :)
Rich
Hi RG, You could not have picked a better baker to follow, Pip did some fantastic breads and were always so well described and photographed perfectly . You certainly seem to have done Pip proud with your rendition of the bread as well as your pictures. Well done you!
It's a great shame that a couple of our great Aussie Bakers no longer contribute to these pages, but a great tribute that their work can still be accessed on TFL and still inspire great bakes.
Kind regards Derek