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Hamelman Cheese Bread, sort of

txfarmer's picture
txfarmer

Hamelman Cheese Bread, sort of

I think it worked out well despite all my changes to the recipe:

- I didn't make a preferment, simply used the same porportion of starter directly, adjusted for my 100% starter so the same percentage of flour came from the starter.

- my starter is whole wheat, so the final product has some WW flavor in it.

- I added <1oz of extra water, due to the WW flour I think

- I eliminated the instant yeast, relied on the starter only. Dallas went from summer to fall in one day, so my kitchen went from 80F to barely 70F, fermentation took nearly 5 hours to expand to a little less than double, with a lot of visible bubbles in the dough. Last weekend when I made the seeded sourdough with similar formula, the fermentation was less than 3 hours at 80F, temperature makes such a huge difference for sourdough dough.

- I retarted the dough during proofing, at <40F, for 13 hours. It took 1 hour and 45 minutes to finish proofing, while last weekend the seeded sourdough only took 1 hour, again, I think it's the lower temperature in my kitchen.

Got very good oven spring, and cheese on the surface made lovely blisters

Pretty open crumb, there are melted cheese in those big holes!

It's a very fragrant bread, crust is pretty thick, love the chewy and tasty crumb