The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

Sun-dried tomato with parmesan--poolish pre-ferment

milwaukeecooking's picture
milwaukeecooking

Sun-dried tomato with parmesan--poolish pre-ferment

Sun-dried parmesan bread

This was my kitchen sink recipe.  I accidentally made too much baguette dough so I decided to throw some of it in my banneton with a few added extras.  I had sun-dried tomatoes around and I had recently ground up some parmesan.  So, I thought, why not mix it into my extra dough.  Before putting it into the oven I spritzed it with water and gave it a sprinkling of cracked pepper.  Out of all the breads I have made this one actually made my mouth water when it was baking.  The smell was incredible.  Here is how I made it. 

Follow my poolish recipe for the dough.  I made 900 grams of dough for this recipe.

After the second rise lightly flatten out the dough into a square that is roughly 12"x12".  On one half of it sprinkle 1/4 cup ground parmesan cheese and then, on top of that, gently press in 1 cup of chopped sun-dried tomtatoes.  Leave 1/2 inch of dough around the edges so that you can seal it back up again.  Fold the empty side over the top of the tomatoes and press down on the edges to seal.  Flatten the dough slightly and business fold it into thirds (like you are mailing a business letter).  Let your dough rest for 5 min and business fold again.  I folded mine three times. 

At this point you should have a few layers of tomato and you will want to shape your dough into a boule.  You don't need a banneton for this because all of the folding and shaping has made your dough fairly tough and it will stand on its own.  However, let your boule rise for an hour, until doubled, before baking. 

Pre-heat the oven to 500F while your dough is rising.

Right before baking spritz your boule with water and top with pepper.  You need the pepper...trust me. 

 Spray the walls of your oven with water and bake for 2 minutes.  Repeat.  Repeat.  Turn the heat down to 425

Bake again for 20 min at 425.

Rotate your bread 180 degress and turn the heat down to 400 and bake for 20 min.  

Check the temp of your bread.  If the internal temperature isn't over 195 it isn't done.  The optimal temp is between 195 and 205. 

I wanted to take pictures of the crumb so you could see the tomato goodness inside but it got eaten before I could remember.  Next time I will post a picture of the crumb.  This is a recipe that I would like to re-create again. 

sun-dried parmesan bread

http://veggieinmilwaukee.wordpress.com

Comments

inlovewbread's picture
inlovewbread

I love how the sun dried tomato peeks out of the scoring. This would be a great bread to take to dinner.

Nicely done.

janij's picture
janij

The sun dried tomatoes.  Were they packed in oil or rehydrated?  I have a ton from last summer that I dried and they are in the freezer.  But they are not packed in oil.  This looks very yummy!

milwaukeecooking's picture
milwaukeecooking

They weren't packed in oil and I did not rehydrate them.  I chopped up the dehydrated tomatoes and threw them on as is.  I didn't want to hydrate because that would add an extra amount of hydration to my bread that I didn't want to deal with. 

dwcoleman's picture
dwcoleman

I thought the idea behind soaking grains/rehydrating was so that it would not pull moisture from the dough, thus lowering the hydration you wanted via bakers math.

 

milwaukeecooking's picture
milwaukeecooking

That is generally the idea but tomatoes get too wet when you rehydrate them.  By leaving them as the tomatoes stayed intact in the dough.  I fear that if I would have rehydrated them they would have gotten too mushy and just blended in with the dough.  Also, you aren't adding that many to this recipe so it didn't soak up much of the water in the dough.  My bread didn't seem dry when eating it.  At most it might soak up a percent or two of your water. 

ques2008's picture
ques2008

i love sun dried tomatoes and this is going into my "to try" list.  thanks.

milwaukeecooking's picture
milwaukeecooking

The crumb was great.  Since I didn't add that much chopped tomato it didn't stand out as, "wow this is tomato bread."  Instead it was a subtle flavor.  Like I said earlier, I wish i would have remembered to take pictures of the crumb but we ate it too quickly.  Next time.

RachelJ's picture
RachelJ

That bread looks soooooo good! I've never had sun dried tomato bread, but I've heard it really good. yours looks so delicious! I bet the flavour is awesome!