My take on polenta pepita sourdough

This week as i was looking for a loaf to try for BBD #83 [http://www.kochtopf.me/bbd-83-brot-spezialmehl-bread-special-flour] a lovely looking polenta sourdough recipe caught my eye.

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/38493/polenta-pepita-sourdough

My formula:

[I think hydration including water from the levain and the porridge is about 89%, including the flour from the levain and the 40g of polenta in the total flour ]

Method:

I built up my levain in 3 builds starting with 6g of my trusty 100% rye, 67% hydration starter.

The evening before mixing day I added 40g of polenta to 160g of water and cooked it gently over a low heat until the water was just absorbed. The porridge then went into the fridge for the night.

Early morning the day before I gave my levain its last feed. I mixed the flour polenta and water and left that at room temperature for about 7 hours (its only meant to be about 20 mins but I had to leave the house). I added salt to my dough, mixed and then added the levain.

I thought about adding more flour, since the dough was very wet, but that has never ended well, so I decided to push through. I managed to do 60 slap and folds (but I think I’ll be finding bits of dough on the wall for the next few days, I had fun though).

I did three stretch and folds immediately after the slap and folds and then one set of stretch and fold every 20 mins four more times and added the toasted pepitas on the 4th set of stretch and folds.

The dough was then left to bulk ferment at room temperature for an hour and half. The dough was close to doubled already.  Things seemed to be happening quickly!

I managed to coax the still fairly loose dough into an oblong shape and got it into my basket and into the fridge for an 18 hour retard.

Getting the dough out of the basket was a bit tricky, it stuck to the cloth in a few spots. By the time I scored it and got it into the oven it had flattened and spread a lot. I baked it at 250 dC with steam for 20mins and then turned done the heat to 230 dC for another 30mins (trying to be bolder with my bakes).

I was so surprised by the spring on this loaf since I upped the percentage of polenta  and pumpkins seeds quite a bit from the original recipe. I also didn’t think it would recover from the man handling I gave it before baking, you can see the spots where i had to wrestle the dough away from the cloth.

The crumb came out moist and open. The polenta completely disappeared into the crumb, I was hoping to see a few flecks of yellow, but I’m not complaining.

The crust is nice and crackly.

The taste of this bread is great, slightly sweet probably due to the polenta. The crumb is chewy but very soft at the same time.

 Overall, I’m very happy with this one! 

Happy baking!