Spelt and buckwheat oat porridge sourdough

After last time’s polenta porridge bake, I find myself having affection for the creamy crumb that is hardly achievable with a non-porridge recipe. That’s why I decided to try subbing oat for cornmeal and play around a bit by incorporating whole grain flour other than whole wheat.

1st attempt:

My first attempt was semi-failed. As you can see in the photo above, despite the moistness of crumb, the oven spring was unimpressive and the gluten was poorly developed. I blamed that to my laziness that I did not allow to flour to autolyse but mixed everything together for an overnight fermentation. However, what made me declare this a failure was the excessive sourness. I usually enjoy a bit of sourness in sourdough but this time the sourness was mouth-puckering that it masked the flavour of oat, spelt and buckwheat. So for the next time, I increased the starter to 22g and reduced the fermentation time from 14 to 10 hours. (By the way, this is the only time in a long while that I used water INSTEAD of yogurt whey as I ran out of it. It is also the first time the bread tasted so sour; do any of u have any idea if they are co-related? It is not because of the fermentation time as I had allowed dough to ferment for much longer in the past. Sour whey=less sour bread?)

Spelt and buckwheat oat porridge sourdough

For the porridge

Rolled oats    50g   25%

Water        100g  50%

Bring the water to a boil and pour the oats to the pot. Take the pot off the fire and let cool to room temperature or refrigerate until needed.

For the dough  

Starter                       22g      12%

Whole wheat flour             137g     72%

Whole spelt flour               48g      25%

Buckwheat flour                6g      3%

Pine nuts/golden flax seed        15g      8%

Water                        160g     84%

salt                          3/4 tsp    2%

vital wheat gluten              1 tbsp

Combine all ingredients except the nuts/seeds in a large bowl with a large spoon util roughly combined, adjust the whey/water added accordingly. Let sit overnight for 10 hours.

Gently take the dough out of the bowl with the help of a scraper and fold it the cooled porridge and nuts/seeds. Let rest for 30 minutes. Perform 3 sets of stretch and fold over a 1.5-3 hour period, depending on the room temperature (mine toke 30+30+45minutes). Preheat the oven at 250°C with a cast iron pan and an additional pan with wet towels.

Score the dough and transfer it to the preheated cast iron pan. Bake at a 250°C/480°F oven with steam (I pour half a cup of hot water to the towels) for 15 minutes. Remove the pan (one for creating steam) from the oven the turn it down to 220°C/430°F and bake for a further 15 minutes or until the bread reach a minimum of 200°F

2nd attempt:

Even though the hydration seems high, with all the whole grain flour, the dough is actually pretty stiff, but it will turn slightly sticky once the porridge is incorporated.

The second attempt is a big improvement from the first though it was slightly under-proofed. The first dough was very sticky and spread like crazy but the stickiness became much more tolerable for the second time even though I upped the water by 10g. It is amazing how the result can vary so much when the ingredients used were almost identical.

The crust is thin and slightly crispy, while the crumb is very moist. The sourness is still detectable but less sharp, allowing the flavour of the grains to come through.

Hope you would give this a try!