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Midweek Sourdough, risen in the fridge

Anomalous's picture
Anomalous

Midweek Sourdough, risen in the fridge

Since I started bread baking last year I've been aiming mainly at sourdough and have made some reasonably good loaves at the weekend but it has been a challenge to fit it into the week's work schedule. The comparatively long rise of approx. 4 hours means I'd be baking at 22:50 if I made the loaf on getting home from work. Letting it rise in the fridge while I'm at work seems a pretty good solution to this, and here's how I've worked it so far.

08:00 Tuesday: mixed 50g starter with 50g wholemeal rye flour and 50g water (the starter is 50% hydrated wholemeal rye and lives in the fridge all the time. It's pretty active despite this). Left it at room temperature, went to work.

18:00 Tuesday: home from work; added 50g strong white organic flour and 50g water. Still at room temperature.

22:00 Tuesday: added 100g white flour and 100g water, still at room temperature.

07:00 Wednesday: added 300g strong white flour, 100g water, 11g salt, a glug of olive oil; mixed, a little bit of folding and stretching, formed a round, left whilst showering, dressing, breakfasting.

07:50 Wednesday: a bit more stretching, folding, gentle kneading and it's looking good. Shaped into a stubby cylinder, into the banneton, bagged, in the fridge. Off to work.

17:30 Wednesday: home from work, dough looks ready. Oven on, 230°C, baking stone in. Oven ready, baking stone out, turned loaf onto stone, dusted with wholemeal rye, slashed, into the oven, 300g boiling water into a hot baking tray for steam. Baked for 20 min at 230°C then 25 min at 190°C. It needs longer baking due to going into the oven fridge-cold.

Result: pretty good. Nice, crunchy crust; moderately airy, moist crumb; reasonably good sourdough tang. For such a relatively small amount of wholemeal rye, it has a surprising amount of wholemeal flavour. I'm not sure where to take it next to get a lighter, airier crumb, but I think I might experiment with leaving it out of the fridge a bit longer before baking in order to let it warm up a bit and do some more rising.

The overall hydration is about 62%. The starter came from a training day at e5 Bakehouse with a reputed 200 year trans-European pedigree and seemed better than my own home-grown starter. I always feed it with equal amounts of wholemeal rye and filtered water and keep it in the fridge.

Comments

dabrownman's picture
dabrownman

and more airy crumb you might try increasing the hydration to 70-72% or so and proof till it passes the poke test.  Your bread looks very nice and brown inside and out for a loaf that is nearly all strong flour - maybe it is the lighting.  Glad it fits your schedule and taste.  Very nice scoring and bloom too.

Anomalous's picture
Anomalous

Thanks! I think I must have accidentally used wholemeal instead of white at some point in the process! Yes, you're right, upping the hydration and prolonging the rise seems the next step. I'm still getting a hang of how hydration is different for sourdough than for bread baked with commercial yeast. With the same hydration, sourdough always seems wetter. I'm getting better at handling wetter doughs though. It takes a bit of practice but I'm getting there. I've got some smoked malted flour to try too, which should be interesting...

dabrownman's picture
dabrownman

is what the clans folk use to make Scotch.  The smoke comes from the peat they used to dry to the malt  It seems the smokier scotch comes from islands off the Scottish coast where few other sources of heat were available.  Peat is used for dying malt for many big island distillers too though.

Anomalous's picture
Anomalous

Tried the 70% hydration on a day off. Good sourdough flavour and nice, airy crumb, but it took quite a lot of attention at the stretching/folding/shaping stage due to being such a wet dough, so it would probably make me late for work if I tried it on a weekday morning. Oddly chewy crust, too... I'll experiment more with this next weekend. During the week I'll try a 65% hydration, rise in the fridge but bring it out when I get home and let it sit for longer.

Isand66's picture
Isand66

What is smoked malted flour?

I need some!  Where did you get it.

Anomalous's picture
Anomalous

Here it is: http://www.bacheldremill.co.uk/shop/details/?q=57

I undersold it slightly: not just smoked and malted but stoneground, oak-smoked and organic too! I haven't tried it yet. Dry, there's certainly a subtle smoky aroma. Should be interesting! I've got another sourdough on the go but will try this in a day or two.

Isand66's picture
Isand66

Thanks for the info.

Please let me know if you can taste the smoky aroma in your bread.

It sounds very intriguing.

I love smoked food so this could be what I've been looking for.

Isand66's picture
Isand66

Does anyone know of a source for the smoked flour that will ship to the USA?

Amazon UK won't ship to the USA.

dabrownman's picture
dabrownman

and some fine grain berries of your choice, maybe it can sort of be home made - like BBQ ribs :-)  Just a thought.  Now malted and peat smoked grain that is ground into flour may be more difficult since malting at home is nigh impossible.  But 4 -5 day sprouted grains that are dried low and slow in a smoker, say smoke lightly for 1 hour or so to start,  where the temp doesn't get over 150 F might be close enough for diastatic malt flour?  An electric smoker with a fine temp controller would be easiest.

Isand66's picture
Isand66

Too many other things to accomplish to try, but it might be worth it one of these days to try if I can't find a source in the states or someone willing to buy it and ship it to me here.

Anomalous's picture
Anomalous

I baked it and blogged it. It's pretty good, and I'll certainly do it again. It's less assertively smoky than I expected. I think it would go well with smoked cheese or fish, but would probably be overwhelmed by the intense smokiness of a Rauchbier.

Anomalous's picture
Anomalous

Oh... I've clearly underestimated the potential for retarded fermentation. I was very late home and didn't get to bake the loaf until 15 hours after it went into the fridge, but it was nowhere near over-proved, and was much better than the usual 8 hours. Clearly I need to lengthen it further. If I shape it the night before I can prove it for 18 hours... More experimentation needed...