Sourdough Boules with Rye

[Polo]

Re: Sourdough Boules with Rye

No problem, glad I could help.

[SCChris]

Re: Sourdough Boules with Rye

It's been a busy couple of weeks and I haven't done as much baking as I'd have liked but this weekend I have a house warming / Octoberfest party tomorrow, so I need to bake.

About a month ago my wife and I agreed that when the large burner falls through the deck of the gas range it's not something that can be economically repaired. The GE Profile oven lasted 12 to 15 years, so I guess that's par for this level of cooking appliance. I was motivated to replace it sooner than later, before the Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years celebrations’. After much reading and research a factory refurb DCS range was found and purchased. I hated to spend the money, especially in this economy and this time of year but the replacement needed to happen and I’d rather spend the money once and be happy with the range.

Ok, back to this weekend’s bake, 4700g of Spelt / Rye and 2600g of Spelt / Rye with Fig, Pistachio and a bit of fennel. I was inspired to include this bread by a post of txfarmer at the fresh loaf site. I'm sticking with the Spelt / Rye loaves because I know the dough and am comfortable with it. The additions of the fruit and nuts will be folded in just before the bulk rise.

Pictures to follow.

Chris

[SCChris]

Re: Sourdough Boules with Rye

Fig and Pistachio Spelt Rye Bread – Take one..

360g levain 100% hydration
900g bread flour
120g fresh ground spelt flour
60g fresh ground rye flour
720g water
22g sea salt
44g water for salt slurry

380g fresh figs quartered and dried for 90 min at 200F - Yeald 200g
10g fennel seed 4Tbs ground in a mortar
200g Pistacios

2636g Total dough weight after fig drying

[texassourdough]

Re: Sourdough Boules with Rye

Spelt is a really interesting grain! Nice formula. Looks good/should taste GREAT! Look forward to some final photos!

DCS makes nice ranges. Should be good for you!

Bake On!
Jay

[SCChris]

Re: Sourdough Boules with Rye

The crumb is a bit tight but the flavor mix is really good.

The Fennel was hydrated in hot water and added to the first mixing of the levain, water and flours. The figs and nuts were added at 2.5 hours, very similar to making a jelly roll. The rough shaping at 4 hours and final shaping a half hour later. Roughly 3 to 4 hours of proofing in baskets and baked in a closed preheated cloche for 20 minutes and 20 more with the cloche opened. The smaller loaves were baked first, proofed 2.75 hours at 80F and have better form than the oval loaves proofed 3.75 hours at 72F. The brotforms for the round loaves, were more appropriate for the volumes of dough and it shows. I really need more round baskets.

I'll have to think about how, and if, to grow the recipe to WFO size. Regardless, I'd like to open the crumb and the volume of figs might be increased. Hmmm?

Chris

PS Jay, Regarding the DCS. It's a huge positive change from the GE. :-)

[TropicalCoasting]

Re: Sourdough Boules with Rye

Made a version of that yesterday
with dried figs ,apples pear peach prunes and walnut and a little honey
I put it all in at the start of a 6 hour ferment.
Topped it with poppy seeds ......excellent.

I didnt have raisin or they would have gone in too

[texassourdough]

Re: Sourdough Boules with Rye

Hi Chris!

I would definitely eat it! Gladly! The bake is a great example of what I consider a "middle"/"standard" bake - and I cite that impression more for the benefit of others than you. Good medium gold on the crust with a nice rip with lighter tones. The "ears" are arguably a hair light (suggesting air temp was a tad low). But really nice look! While I often bake darker (much darker) I find that fruit tends to demand slightly lower temps (as illustrated where the fruit is at the surface).

Your hearth was clearly hot as shown by the pattern of elongated holes near the base of the loaf. The somewhat schizoid crumb (mix of somewhat tight with a fair number of bigger holes is a problem I most often encounter with breads with inclusions like fruit of nuts. Seems like it is harder to get uniform rising in that situation. Given the wetness of your dough I tend to think your starter may have not quite been as robust as it could be. Similar issues have me now pretty reliably doing one or two "pre-feeds" to ensure the starter is as robust as possible before I begin building my levain. If you have ANY question regarding its robustness I would heartily recommend trying that approach and see if it makes any difference. As I typically only bake every week or two (and sometimes longer) I found it was easy to have my starter get a bit sluggish and to grow progressively more sluggish over time - leading to inconsistency. The multiple feeds resolved those problems!

From your formulas it appears you put the spelt in the levain and simply used bread flour in the fig bread????

Great job!
Jay

[SCChris]

Re: Sourdough Boules with Rye

Jay, thanks for catching the error in the recipe, I adjusted it above. I’m really enjoying having the mill available for Rye, Spelt and the other goodies available, oh and the new range as well.

You're spot on with respect to the levain not running at full speed. I think one issue was not allowing the levain to come to full speed before mixing, my attempt to minimize the sour of sourdough worked to a degree but had consequences.

The size of the finished dough batch, 2600g, also created a question in the number of loaves to bake. I shaped 4 650g loaves, but my baskets are best suited to 700g - 800g loaves and the lack of support the large baskets provided for the final proof shows. I should have settled for 3 full boules and had a bit of extra dough or bumped the recipe up 400g.

Another point is that when shaping a standard boule the skin is brought tight and then turned oven and placed into the basket to proof. With a standard bread dough the final shaping is all about getting the skin tight without being too rough and loosing volume. With the additions of fig and nuts I was very tentative to push the shaping step too far and end up with nuts and figs breaking through or overly thin spots in the crust. This feel for this dough is something I'll need another couple of runs to get more comfortable with.

As I said the flavor profile is really good and a well suited addition to a cheese plate or something like a beet salad. Adding fruit and nuts to bread limits the flexibility of use, but it sure opens the scope of possibilities for the tree of ripe figs next door.

Chris

[texassourdough]

Re: Sourdough Boules with Rye

Hi Chris!

Good comments! And you you really know and are sensitive to your process. Very critical to making great loaves consistently!

You probably saw the OLD Chad Robertson video poked up on TFL. I will poke it up here in a new thread. Great handling video showing dough at various stages. And loaf formation which is far more aggressive than most on this (and TFL) understand is appropriate. Chad has great touch!