My Best Sourdough Yet - No more Einkorn
I started my yeasty journey 8 months ago when I learned about Einkorn flour and the health benefits over regular American wheat. So I started baking with sourdough with Einkorn and had good tasting results but the dough was wet, slack, and didn't have the nice open structure I wanted. With the lack of flour availability at the moment, I got a 50 pound bag of Heritage Spring Patent Artisan Flour from my local bakery supply. It's non-bleached, non-bromated, but it's still just regular AP flour. What a revelation! This was my first loaf and the flavor and structure is amazing. I think I will continue to run my starter on Einkorn and only use it partially in my loaf.
I followed James Morton's San Francisco Sourdough recipe (below). I mixed my dough with a few stretch and folds and let it sit at 67 degree room temp over night, shaped the loaf in the morning, then let it sit in the banneton basket in the fridge while I went to work. That evening I baked it in the dutch oven for 35 minutes. My only problem was I burnt the bottom but I think next time I will only preheat the dutch oven for 5 minutes or so and not 20 minutes like I had. I could keep eating this bread all day. The flavor, the crust, the aroma, it's just amazing.
425g flour
150g starter
300g water
10g salt
Do you start the oven at 500ºF and turn it down to 450ºF when the bread goes in, or 450ºF/425ºF?
I started the oven at 450 and lowered to 430 when the bread went in.
Thank you! Looks like a fabulous loaf.
I have been experimenting with Einkorn and I find it difficult to work with.
What I wound up doing is to go to higher hydration (as much as 85% hydration) and then literally pouring it into the 500º F preheated dutch over, bake for 15 minutes then lower the temp to 450º F for the remaining 45 minutes I am also at high altitude and need to bake a long longer than when I was baking Einkorn at sea level). I leave the lid on the entire time so that I get eh maximum rise (of course it doesn't brown as much but that is not an issue for us) and I get loaves that have decent rise and crumb.
Good luck!