The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

Raisin Fennel Sourdough 

Danni3ll3's picture
Danni3ll3

Raisin Fennel Sourdough 

This particular loaf is inspired from Maurizio at The Perfect Loaf. I was looking for a different flavour combination and this intrigued me. I am not particularly fond of fennel but the rave reviews convinced me.

 

The first hiccup was to find some diastatic malt because Maurizio uses malted flour but no such animal is available in Canada. I thought I had made diastatic malt last weekend but since I let the shoots get green, I was informed by “the powers that be” that my diastatic malt was no such thing. Well that explains why I didn’t notice a darker crust or crumb. So I was on the hunt to find some locally. Long story short, I found some CMC Canadian 2-row malt berries in a small brew shop. Yes! And “the powers that be” on TFL tell me that this will work! Double yes!

The second hiccup was milling my whole grains. Maurizio used whole wheat flour but I wanted to change things up so I subbed out some Kamut and Spelt just because. ?Well, I didn’t quite mill enough to provide enough bran for the levain so I ended up using some bran left over from last week’s bake. I was short 2 g of Kamut so I simply added 2 grams of red fife. I adjusted the quantities below so that it should be okay. If there isn’t enough bran for the levain, just make up the difference with unbleached flour.

 

Recipe:

 

Makes 3 loaves

 

Ingredients

 

Levain:

25 g starter

50 g bran/flour mixture left over from milling and sifting

50 g unbleached flour

90 g water at 85F (divided into 50 and 40 g portions)

 

Main dough:

125 g high extraction Red Fife flour (mill and sift 140 g of whole berries)

50 g high extraction Kamut flour (mill and sift 65 g of whole berries)

50 g high extraction Spelt flour (mill and sift 65 g of whole berries)

800 g unbleached all purpose flour

11 g diastatic malt powder (mill finely 11 g of CMC Canadian 2-Row Malt barley berries)

50 g freshly ground flax

12 g vital wheat gluten

800 g of water at 86F

20 g pink himalayan salt

30 g yogurt

150 g levain

200 g golden raisins (soaked in hot water for 30 minutes and drained)

7 g freshly ground fennel seed

 

2 days before:

  1. In the morning, take a bit of your refrigerated starter and feed it equal quantities of filtered water and unbleached flour. Do the same again about 12 hours later. I prefer using bottled or filtered water as the chlorine can affect the wee beasties in a negative way.
  2. Mill the grains (red fife, kamut, spelt) and sift out the bran. 
  3. Mill the malt barley berries to get diastatic malt powder. 
  4. Grind the flax seeds in a bullet (Komo recommends against milling oily seeds like flax in their mills).
  5. Weigh the high extraction (sifted) flours needed and place in a tub. To the tub, add the diastatic malt, the vital wheat gluten and the ground flax. Stir well to distribute the malt and the VWG, cover, and reserve.
  6. Save the bran and the extra flour for the levain.
  7. Grind the fennel seed in a bullet to get a fairly fine powder. Reserve.

 

1 day before:

  1. In the morning, do the first build of the levain by adding 50 g of warm water and 50 g of bran/left over milled flour to the revived starter. 
  2. 4 hours later, add the 50 grams of unbleached flour and 40 g of warm water. Let rest for 6 - 8 hours and then refrigerate overnight to let the acid work its magic on the bran. I let mine rise for 6 hours since it peaked at that point then into the fridge for 15 hours. Hopefully, this was long enough for the acid to soften the bran and prevent it from cutting too many gluten strands.

 

Dough making day:

  1. Take the levain out of the fridge and let it warm up.
  2. Add the warm water to the flour tub and autolyse for at least 3 hours. The dough felt very firm right from the beginning. I am not sure if this was because of the hydration or the additives but this was definitely not a loose dough. 
  3. Add the salt, the yogurt and the levain and mix well to integrate. Do 50 in tub folds/coils and let rest 30 minutes in the oven with the lights on and the door cracked open (~82F). The gluten seemed really well developed and the dough pulled cleanly off the walls of the container about half way though the folds. 
  4. The plan was to remove the dough from the tub and do 100 slaps and folds on the counter. I decided that this dough didn’t need this so I did regular stretch and folds for a total of 8 folds using both hands to really give it a good stretch. Place back in the warm spot. 
  5. At this point, boil water and pour the hot water on the raisins and let soak. 30 minutes later, drain the raisins. I saved the soaking water with plans to either flavour my kefir with it or use it in another bread recipe. 
  6. Take the dough out of the tub onto a barely damp counter and do a set of envelope folds in both directions. Let rest 10 minutes. Spread the dough out in a large rectangle and sprinkle with part of the raisins and ground fennel. Fold the dough into envelope folds and sprinkle more raisins and fennel on the bare spots. Do gentle slaps and folds until the raisins stop popping out of the dough. Place the dough back into the tub and into the warm spot. Be sure to keep the dough covered whenever it is in the tub. 
  7. Continue doing stretches and folds every 30 minutes until the dough holds itself nicely into a round shape. It took another 3 sets after the addition of the raisins with this dough. Then let rest until you can see small and large bubbles on the surface. Total bulk fermentation for this particular dough was 4.5 hours. 
  8. At this point, I thought I wouldn’t have time to divide and shape the dough before my walk so I put it in the fridge. The walking buddies decided that 37C was too hot to walk but my dough was already in the fridge. So some time was spent baking blueberry muffins, French blueberry yogurt cake and a blueberry crumble pie. Oh, did I mention I got my hands on some wild blueberries? The dough stayed in the fridge for about 2 and a half hours. 
  9. Remove the dough from the tub into a bare counter. Sprinkle flour over the dough and divide into 3 equal portions of about 790 g. Sprinkle a bit more flour over the portions and round the boules using a bench knife. Let rest. Eat one or two blueberry muffins. ?
  10. After an hour rest, shape tightly into boules (I used this method:https://youtu.be/ww78_SfGyQE ) and place seam side down into rice floured bannetons. Cover and let rest at room temperature (73F) for two hours. Then place in a cold fridge (38F) to proof overnight.

 

Baking Day

  1. The next morning, heat the oven to 475F with the dutch ovens inside for at least 45 minutes. Place rounds of parchment paper in the bottom of the pots, and gently place the dough seam side up inside. 
  2. Cover the pots and bake the loaves at 450 F for 25 minutes, remove the lids, drop the temperature to 425F, and bake for another 22 minutes.

 

 

Looks like I got fantastic bloom on these loaves. They really burst open! I hope the crumb is as nice as the outside! Oh and they smell wonderful!

Comments

dabrownman's picture
dabrownman

The half malt you made is perfectly good to use.  It is just half power then it would have been is all and might be a tiny bitbit bitter is all but the small amount shouldn't make much difference.  With this much whole grain and an autolyse no malt is required anyway and why your bead always browns up so nicely without it.  That is why all the malt I make now is red malt. Can't wait to find out how it tastes Fennel is one of the 4 kings of bread spices with anise, coriander and caraway and not just for rye breads either! 

Very nice as usual and happy baking Danni.

Danni3ll3's picture
Danni3ll3

add to bread? Flavour? Colour?

dabrownman's picture
dabrownman

to white breads even though most folks add it to rye breads but ,it is white breads where red malt really shines making it actually have some flavor and color:-)  Just toast up that white half malt you made until it looks red enough for your taste.  It is my 2nd favorite flavor enhancer after Toadies but its color qualities are unmatched.

Danni3ll3's picture
Danni3ll3

Just as pleased with these. 

franbaker's picture
franbaker

and I'm not even that crazy about raisins (although golden raisins are definitely the best). My favorite use for fennel seed at the moment is with beets (lots of nice beets at the farmers' market these days, and sometimes some pretty baby fennel, too). Fermented beet kraut, grated beet salad with grapefruit and fennel. Yum. Would probably be good with your lovely bread.

cfraenkel's picture
cfraenkel

I never would have thought to add those to beets, now I need more information, it sounds delicious!

not.a.crumb.left's picture
not.a.crumb.left

and look totally stunning! I am very intrigued about that fennel flavour and I just can imagine the wafts coming out of your kitchen...Isn't it a bit like liquorice or is it just me?

Can't wait for the crumb shot and I am sure that you make some people happy by sharing your breads again!  Kat

Danni3ll3's picture
Danni3ll3

which is very nice with the golden raisins. Personally I am not crazy about licorice but with the raisins, I like it. Others liked it too as I took a loaf to pottery and they scarfed it down. I even got two orders for next weekend’ bread. 

Here is the crumb:

dabrownman's picture
dabrownman

you are on a roll!

Elsie_iu's picture
Elsie_iu

I don't like the taste of fennel seeds in savory dishes because it feels weirdly sweet. However, I guess I might like it when paired with something that's sweet already such as raisins. Maybe I should give it a try...

 

cfraenkel's picture
cfraenkel

I'm making my own modified version right now.  (mostly just using your flavour ideas) We'll see how it works out. (I'm using all milled grain - Hard red, Einkorn, Spelt and Hard White for your AP) I found some delicious raisins I can actually eat so this was a good post to find. I also toasted some sunflower seeds to go in there, it just seemed like it would work. I have all my flour ground and the raisins are soaking overnight, the levain doing it's thing. Tomorrow will be bake day, I have to go in to school in the morning (yuck) but will get it all mixed up and ready for bulk ferment before I leave.  I'm going to have to be more disciplined with my baking starting next week.  Planning ahead and all that. The paycheque will be nice though!

Danni3ll3's picture
Danni3ll3

appealed to you at the same time that I have a batch of this recipe proofing in the fridge. My daughter convinced me to enter some of my breads in a country fair so I made this one and the 50% Wholewheat community bake we did. Although I changed up some of the flours on that one. 

cfraenkel's picture
cfraenkel

100% milled grain, and it is delicious!

Danni3ll3's picture
Danni3ll3

And 100% home milled!! I am impressed!!!

boyfood@gmail.com's picture
boyfood@gmail.com

 You're the first bread baker on Fresh Loaf who published your intention to incorporate Einkorn in your bread. I also use it, but am never happy with its oven spring. How do you achieve such a good oven spring? Is it only done when you incorporate Einkorn with other conventional wheat flours?