Another Semola Loaf

Taking inspration from some very nice looking Semola/Durum loaves recently posted on the forum, I thought it was time to try my hand.

I haven't baked with semola rimacinata for a while; I think the last time was based on Maurizio's excellent Pane Siciliano recipe.

This time it was to be an homage to pane di Altamura with 100% semola rimacinata including the levain. I already had a bag of this flour:

so that's what I used. It turned out to be a good choice, as it is the finest, strongest and thirstiest semola flour I have come across.

I followed the Altamura dop recipe pretty closely, picking up a few tips from my favourite Italian breadmaking site, La Confraternita della Pizza

I started by converting my stiff starter to a durum one, then refreshed several times at 60% hydration (1 starter/3 flour/1.8 water) at 25c. The starter seemed to get a bit sluggish so I did a feed with 5% rye, which perked things up.

Prior to making the dough, I did the recommended 3 refreshes:

6pm 1/1/0.7 28c

11pm 1/6/4.2 25.5c

8am 1/1/0.7 29c

The dough had a 75min autolyse and then the levain was added at 20%

Initially I was going to mix on speed 1 only, but instead I followed Michael Wilson's advice, who said that the durum flour likes a lot of energy input, so I did 12 minutes on speed 1 and 4 minutes on speed 2. Interestingly, the dough was prone to overheating very quickly during mixing; this must be a feature of durum flour as I don't get see it with my usual flours.

I had originally planned for 70% hydration, but I was able to bassinage up to 77% - I could probably have gone up to 80%.

Bulk lasted 4 hours and volume increase was 38%

Final proof was 1hr 20m. I skipped the priest's hat and u skuanete shaping - maybe next time.......

I was quite please with the end result:

Lance