15% Teff Flour with Teff Flour Levain

My first use of teff flour came during our Gluten Free Community Bake.  Comments made here intrigued me, and I finally got around to experimenting.

To get a good taste of the teff flour, I kept the recipe simple.  I created a teff flour starter over a 3-day period by using my white flour starter and then doing a 1:4:4 refresh every 8 hours.  From there, I used my standard sourdough loaf approach but used a 100% teff flour levain for the 15% prefermented flour.

As Gina mentioned in her comment, the teff flour goes through a range of aromas as it ferments.  It is actually quite sweet smelling after maybe 5-6 hours and then gets noticeably tangy sour after 8+ hours.  Even though it was 100% teff flour in the levain, it had no trouble with wheat flour and leavened the dough right on target with a 15% PFF taking about 4 hours to reach 75-80% volume increase at 76 deg F.

As expected with 15% gluten free flour, the crumb is even/closed, but is not at all dense.  It is moist but not gummy.  The teff almost has a shortening effect.  The taste of the loaf is excellent!  Whole grain, nutty flavors/aromas.

Levain
67.5g    Teff flour
64.1g    Water
9g         Teff starter
Combine and ferment at 70 deg F for 12 hours

Final Dough
225g    All Purpose Flour
157.5g Bread Flour
228.4g Water
9g        Salt

1)   Excluding salt, combine final dough ingredients with levain until just wet
2)   Fermentolyse 20 minutes
3)   Fold in salt and any bassinage water (if needed).  Use Pinch and Squeeze to fully mix.  Bowl knead until dough comes back together.  Rest 10 minutes.
4)   Three sets of bowl kneading with 10 minute rests
5)   Bulk ferment at 76 deg F.  Folds every 30-45 minutes until "puffy".  Preshape at 75-80% rise
6)   Preshape at rest 20 minutes
7)   Final proof at 76 deg F
8)   Preheat oven to 465 deg F with oven setup for steam
9)   Bake with steam at 465 deg F (2 minutes); 400 deg F (18 minutes); vent oven; 435 deg F (15-20 minutes); bake until hollow thump