The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

Semolina experiment

MikeC's picture
MikeC

Semolina experiment

I am still extremely new to this forum, as well as to bread baking in general.  I am enjoying reading all of your posts, and appreciate greatly the opportunity to learn from your successes and/or tribulations.  I am sticking with straight doughs for now, and working them only by hand, in the hope that I will develop my feel for the dough. 

For these loaves, I used the following recipe:

400g KA Bread Flour

200g Semolina Flour

12g SAF instant yeast

1T Diastatic Malt Powder

2t Salt, dissolved in

420g water at 125 degrees

I mixed the dry ingredients together, then added the water/salt.  I let this rest for 20 minutes.

I turned the dough out onto a lightly floured bench and kneaded conventionally for approximately 10 minutes, did a windowpane test to determine dough development, then returned the dough to a lightly oiled bowl to rest until almost triple (which took only about 1 hour)

At that point I folded the dough and returned it to the bowl to rest for an additional hour, at which point it slightly more than doubled.

I divided the dough in half, and shaped two batards, covered them with a damp towel and a plastic bag, then let them proof. I preheated my oven to 525.  When the loaves were proofed, I scored them, then I added a cup of water to a preheated sheet pan sitting on the bottom rack of my oven.  I placed the loaves, on parchment, on the preheated baking stone on the middle shelf, turned the heat down to 470F and misted every thirty seconds for three minutes.  At ten minutes I removed the sheetpan from the oven. 

Semolina loaves

Here's the crumb, apparently I manhandled the dough...

I probably should have left these in the oven a little longer.  The crumb is not as open as I would have liked, but the texture is wonderfully soft and moist.  The flavor is everything I expect in an italian bread, and I think the ratio of semolina flour is ideal.

Comments

SylviaH's picture
SylviaH

Beautiful Italian Bread!!  The crumb looks perfect!  Great job!

Sylvia

mountaindog's picture
mountaindog

For someone *new* to all of this, you do a very nice job shaping and scoring those loaves. I'll bet they tasted fantastic with the semolina flavor.