It all started with this picture when I dropped my son at his mate's house for tennis and saw these colors:   

                                                             The pink bougainvillea next to their front door against

                                                                      a flowering jacaranda in the background

A few days later a girl friend invited me to have tea in the park just round the corner from her place, under the flowering jacarandas.   

           Symphony jacarandas:

           First movement

                                          Second movement

                                                                           Third movement, and

                                                                                                      Fourth movement 

And this was the bread that I made for our tea: 

                 Pain au Levain with Praline Rose 

My Formula

• 350 g starter @ 75% hydration
• 310 g bread flour
• 40 g medium rye flour
• 262 g water * see note below
• 183 g Praline Rose (pink caramelized almonds), 1/3 of the weight of total flours
• 11 g salt
• Extra rice flour and medium rye flour for dusting

Total dough weight 1.15 kg and dough hydration 75% (*Note: I did 75% hydration but in truth the hydration of the final dough felt much higher because of the sugar dissolved from Praline Rose which I over-looked.   70% hydration, or 235 grams of water, would have been plenty.  Because of the wet dough, extra stretch of folds became necessary to build up dough strength.)

1. In a large bowl mix all ingredients except salt and Praline Rose until just combined
2. Autolyse 30 minutes
3. Stretch and folds in the bowl 100 times (I tried to build up some dough strength before the nuts go in), then
4. Fold in salt and Praline Rose by way of S & F's 100 times again
5. Bulk fermentation 2 hours with 2 sets of S & F's of 80 - 100 times each at 45 minutes and 90 minutes (see Note above)
6. Divide into two pieces and pre-shape to rounds (or leave as whole), rest for 15 minutes, then shape to boules and place in a flour dusted banneton
7. Proof 1/2 hour then into fridge for overnight retarding (I did 18 hours)
8. Next morning bake with steam at 240C / 460F for 10 minutes and another 30 minutes at 210C / 410F (It was a mistake to bake at such high heat.  I completely over-looked that there was a lot of sugar in Praline Rose.  I did see that it browned very quickly in the first 10 minutes of baking and turned down the heat to 210C but had not realized at that point that the dough would burn anyway because of the sugar level.  The oven temperature should not have been more than 200 C for the whole duration of baking.)

                                                I truly burned this bread but the crumb was lovely and open.

This was one of the best sourdoughs I have made, despite the charcoaled crust.  The crumb is very chewy and mildly sour.  I don't taste much sweetness from the sugar, very little in fact.  I am very confused as to why this bread does not taste sweet.  If my memory serves me right, the pre-crushed Praline Rose I've got has only 20% almonds, which means at 183 g of Praline Rose, there was 146 grams of sugar, about 1/4 of the flour weight!!   Then, why doesn't this levain bread taste sweet?!  In fact, I don't think I've ever had a sweet sourdough, not even the chocolate sourdough I made.   Is that why they say sourdoughs are NOT fattening?!  Hog heaven?!

Shiao-Ping