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Bereit sind, arbeiten Sie hart und Opfern Sie viel Auswuchs Sauerteigbrot

Yes, this is a remake of a bread that we really liked 3 years ago, Just click on the title……the ever popular - Willing to work hard and sacrifice much, sprouted, sourdough bread.  We were taken back when Lucy learned that a robot companion named Cimon (sounds like the real Simon) was blasted off the earth to the Space Station.

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Yes, NASA now thinks that robots make better companions for astronauts than people do.  They do not vomit, pee and poop themselves during launch or any other time either.  Lucy says they should have sent her up there for astronomical companionship instead - even though she would have barfed, peed and pooped all over everything for sure….. plus she would shed a bunch of hair that would have been problematic eventually – probably causing massive die off of anything alive ….except Cimon.

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I told her she was just plan nuts, instead of salted,  and that NASA was not stupid enough to send a barking,  baking apprentice 2nd classes that only speaks Swedish into space.  We Know she would immediately get upset with one of the extraterrestrial aliens spaced out there (humans are ET Aliens in space), bite their ankles and upchuck on their bare toes when they least expect it. 

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Lucy says NASA is stupid - everyone needs and loves rescue dogs.  Even people with all the right stuff need service dogs for anxiety or complete mental breakdowns when the air, food, water and electricity run out, especially at the same time, so far from home.

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She Says NASA has it all wrong from the get go, or launch in NASA terms, and went on to say that the real problem is that there are people on the space station.  The only thing that should be up there are robots and their Service Dogs like her in the first place.

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She said that robots will eventually evolve to need service dogs too but, they will be programmed to never abuse them like their human masters do.   So, she figures she really wants to be a rescue, service, space dog one day if it means being rescued from me and having a real friend like Cimon. 

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We don't see enough bottoms around here

I just about had enough when I realized that she wasn’t done and getting ready to do a toe, jam job on me.  Time to save those toes.   Lucy said she prefers robots with artificial intelligence rather than artificial people who act like robots and just think they are intelligent - like me.  Well doggies as Jed Clampett used to say, that did it for me.'

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I told her I would ship her off to Elon Musk at Space X and have her blasted off toward Mars 15 years before humans or robots will need service, space dogs there before she could say Yippee O KIya!   She immediately disappeared to who knows where before I could grab her but she will turn up at dinner time no doubt.  That is why I had to do a re-mix of an older bread today ….so here it is….. but it isn’t quite the same either.

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This time there was only 35% whole grains split 50 / 50 sprouted and non sprouted.  After milling, we had an 18% extraction of sprouted and non -sprouted bran which we split between the two levains 16 g each.  One was started with 8 g of NMNF Rye SD with 18 g of bran and 12 g of high extraction flour, half being sprouted at 100% hydration.  The other levain ended up with 16 g of bran and 142 g of high extraction flour, half being sprouted, with 30 g of fig yeast water - also at 100% hydration.

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It isn't the 4th of July without ribs

The dough flour was the remaining 114 g (23%) of high extraction flour, half sprouted and 325 g  (65%) of KA bread flour.  That means the 2 levains were 6% each pre-fermented bran and flour or 12% pre-fermented flour total.  The over all hydration was 77% and we did a 2 hour autolyse with pink Himalayan sea salt sprinkled on top.

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Grilled Salmon

We went old school, Space X Ballistic on this this once the two levains hit the mix and we stirred them in with the salt.  Onto the counter it went and we started the blast off with 200 slap and folds.  A 40 minutes rest, 3% more water added  so we could to say we did a fancy double hydration, and 50 more slap and folds followed by a 40 minute rest.   Then 2 sets of Stretch and Folds from the compass points also on 40 minute intervals.

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Green Chili Chicken Enciladas

The we chucked it into an oiled SS bowl for a 16 hour retard.  The next day we let it warm up for an hour before we pre-shaped and then shaped it into a short, fat batard the French have a great name for if you care to look it up.  I would tell you but Lucy isn’t here to remind me what it is but she would be unlikely to know since she doesn’t speak French or English.

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Shrimp Kabobs

Into the rice floured basket it went.  After another hour and a half we unmolded it onto parchment on a peel, slashed it extraterrestrial like, forgot to spritz it well, and into the Combo Cooker it went, screaming something appropriate, in an alien tongue, that even Lucy couldn’t decipher.   At any rate, the screaming thankfully stopped when the 450 F lid mercifully went on. Never had one do that before and won’t miss it not happening again.

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Lucy's Red White and Blue, 4th of July Celebration Apple Pie with Snockered Cranberries, Blueberries aand Fresh Ginger

We did 18 minutes of steam and then 12 at 425 F convection with the lid off and the bread removed from the bottom with 8 minutes to go.  It was 208 F when it was moved to the cooling crack.  It sprang, sang, bloomed, blistered a bit because of no Spritz and browned up nice enough.  Now we have to wait for Ribs tomorrow to see if it has a nice, open,, moist glossy crumb or it drowned, closed mouth, in gummy, gibberish.

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Lucy says always take a salad into space to eat with that ground up stuff in a tube.  Then you can have that Brownie covered with icing in red white and blue sprinkles.

This bread really puffed itself up and was super soft and moist on the inside ..... it was tangy too.  Sent some home with cousin Jay after the fireworks we set off in the middle of the street.

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There were plenty of chocolate sourdough posts recently. I was a bit hesitant in baking my own because, you know, the idea of chocolate bread is just a bit…boring… Cherries, raisins, cranberries, hazelnuts, coffee and not much else. It’s also conventional to pair chocolate with rye or spelt flour. Really, there’s not much creativity to speak of.

If you know anything about me, you understand that I’ve to put my own spin on every bread I bake. Not long ago, I made use of the sweetness of milk chocolate to compliment the strong flavour of goat cheese in bread. However, for this bake, it’s the chocolate that takes the centre stage.

Darjeeling Tea Chocolate Orange Sourdough with Masa Harina and Buckwheat Flour

Dough flour:

210g       70%       Whole red wheat flour

60g         20%       Masa Harina

30g         10%       Buckwheat flour (raise to 15% for more pronounced flavour)

For leaven:

10g        3.3%       Starter

10g        3.3%       Bran sifted out from dough flour

10g        3.3%       Water

For tea:

10g         3.3%       Darjeeling tea leaves

50g       16.7%       Hot water

For dough:

290g     93.3%       Dough flour excluding bran for leaven

206g     68.7%       Water

64g       21.3%       Whey

50g       16.7%       Darjeeling tea

30g         10%        Leaven

30g         10%        Unsweetened cocoa powder

20g         6.7%       Maple syrup (tastes a bit bitter at this %, feel free to increase up to 15%)

9g             3%        Vital Wheat Gluten

6g             2%        Dark barley malt powder

5g          1.7%        Salt

Add-ins:

9g             3%       Candied orange peels (might be better at 6%)

33g         11%       Chopped dark chocolate

___________

305g       100%      Whole grain

335g     109.8%     Total hydration (still felt a tad stiff because of the addition of cocoa powder, I suggest upping it further to 112%)

Sift out the coarse bran from the dough flour, reserve 10g for leaven. Soak the rest  in equal amount of whey taken from dough ingredients.

Combine all leaven ingredients and let sit until doubled, about 4 hours.

Soak the orange peels in enough hot water to rehydrate. Set aside until needed.

Steep the tea by pouring the hot water over the tea leaves. Leave to infuse for 30 minutes. Strain the mixture and discard the tea leaves.

Roughly combine all dough ingredients except for the salt, leaven and soaked bran, autolyse for 15 minutes. Knead in the reserved ingredients and ferment for 30 minutes. Fold in the add-ins then ferment for 6.5 hours longer.

Preshape the dough then let it rest for 20 minutes. Shape the dough and put in into a banneton. Leave to proof for 12 minutes before retarding for 12 hours.

Preheat the oven at 230°C/446°F. Remove the dough from the fridge to warm up at room temperature for 40 minutes. Spray the dough with water and sprinkle the poppy seeds onto its surface.

Score the dough and bake at 230°C/446°F with steam for 15 minutes then without steam for 25 minutes more or until the internal temperature reaches a minimum of 208°F. Let cool for at least 3 hours before slicing.

This bread bloomed well in the oven. It’s also a rare occasion that I got the scoring right. The crust is pleasingly shiny and crispy.

It was a bit shocking when I cut the bread open. Despite the fact that the dough was properly proofed and carefully handled, the crumb was not as open as I had hoped for. I think the cocoa powder added some significant weight to the dough which resulted in the rather close crumb. The crumb is by no mean dry but could definitely be moister. It might be a wise decision to up the hydration next time I work with cocoa powder.  Nevertheless, the dough structure achieved is pretty decent.

I like the corn and Darjeeling tea flavour in the background of this bread. However, the buckwheat is somewhat masked by the cocoa powder. Increasing the percentage of maple syrup and candied orange peels would help in achieving a better balance between sweetness and bitterness.

My first bake with white flour (yes, really) was dedicated to txfarmer’s sourdough ciabatta