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Honey Pear Gorgonzola Bread

Danni3ll3's picture
Danni3ll3

Honey Pear Gorgonzola Bread

For the honey bread challenge, I got the inspiration from here: https://bakingfanatic.wordpress.com/2014/03/23/gorgonzola-and-pear-sourdough-loaves/

I had a piece of leftover Gorgonzola from making pizzas and some dried pears on hand and thought that honey would go great with them. I added an oat soaker because I love the texture it gives to bread.

Ingredients
50 g whole rolled oats soaked in 100 g boiling water for a few hours
50 g dried pears soaked in boiling water for a few hours and drained
100 g multigrain flour
227 g unbleached flour
25 g honey
167 g water
72 g Levain (rye and partially sifted whole wheat at 100% hydration)
1/4 tsp yeast
6 g salt
40 g pecans, chopped
50 g Gorgonzola, crumbled
Autolyse the water, flours, honey and oat soaker for a half hour.
Mix in the salt, yeast and Levain by pinching and folding.
Add in the nuts, Gorgonzola and drained pears by first spreading the dough into a rectangle on a wet counter and sprinkling the add-ins on top. Roll up and do a set of slaps and folds to incorporate the add-ins evenly.
Put in a warm spot to ferment. Do 4-5 stretch-and-folds every half hour for a total of 4 times.
When the dough is just about doubled, turn out on a floured surface and pre-shape. Let rest for 20 minutes and shape using the letter fold method.
Place in floured baskets and put into fridge to retard overnight.
The next day, heat oven to 500f with Dutch oven inside. When oven has heated for at least 45minutes, turn out dough onto counter sprinkled with cornmeal. Score cold dough.
Sprinkle cornmeal in bottom of Dutch oven, carefully place dough inside, put lid on Dutch oven, and bake for 20 minutes at 500f. Drop temp to 450f and bake an additional 10 minutes. Remove lid and bake till nice and dark.

It stuck to the Dutch oven so I had to put the lid on to steam it out. I popped it back in the turned off oven for a few minutes to recrisp the crust. Crumb shot will come when it cools down.

Comments

Yippee's picture
Yippee

And the formula sounds delicious, too! Looking forward to the crumb shot.

nmygarden's picture
nmygarden

Lovely combination of ingredients! Looking forward to hearing how the flavors came through...

Cathy

Ru007's picture
Ru007

This one sure looks good, picture perfect! 

Gorgonzola and pear sounds like a lovely combo, i'm sure it'll taste wonderful. 

Can't wait for that crumb shot. 

Great job Danni!

Danni3ll3's picture
Danni3ll3

it had risen more. It came out pretty flat which you can't see from the angle I took the picture. I will be cutting into it shortly. 

Thank you everyone for the nice comments. I really appreciate them!

Isand66's picture
Isand66

Looks beautiful especially with those pecans peaking out.  Look forward to your crumb post and flavor comments.

Curious to know how the pear flavor comes though.

BXMurphy's picture
BXMurphy

That's one heck of a combo! It'll be interesting to hear how it tastes.

I probably would have doubled the salt. We know that salt enhances the flavor of food. Did you know that sugar enhances the flavor of salt?

Yep!

That's why you'll often crave something sweet after eating a salty snack or vice versa.

Good job thinking of steaming out the stuck loaf! I'd probably be chipping it out with a butter knife! :)

Murph

Danni3ll3's picture
Danni3ll3

However, the flavour is very nice. The pecans really come through with a very light taste of gorgonzola and pear. The crumb is super moist. Maybe I didn't let it rise enough during fermentation. I am sure the gurus here will let me know why my loaf is so gummy at the bottom. Luckily, it turns out to be just a very small part of the slice when it is cut.

On second thought, maybe steaming the loaf is what did it. The bottom was quite wet when it finally released from the dutch oven. 

dabrownman's picture
dabrownman

level in the dough once it get hot enough to melt.  I have had the same thing happen in high fat cheese breads.  Doesn't hurt the flavor much at all and that crust is perfect.  This would make one heck of a bologna sandwich and should be pretty killer toasted too.  

Nicely done and happy 123 baking 

Danni3ll3's picture
Danni3ll3

about the cheese migrating to the bottom of the loaf. The only other bread I have made with cheese was a olive feta bread and that didn't happen in that case.

This bread is definitely a hit since hubby grabbed a slice thinking it was the date raisin cider seed one and told me it was delicious. Under no circumstances will he eat blue cheese. Well, he went back for a couple of pieces even after I told him that the one he was eating was the Gorgonzola!

dabrownman's picture
dabrownman

this one is that feta doesn't melt well at all and stays put.  Many cheeses don't melt well, have great flavor and stay put in bread.  Blue cheeses melt the easiest and move around.  Here is a MeltOMeter chart for cheeses

http://www.sargentofoodservice.com/trends-innovation/cheese-melt-meter/

Danni3ll3's picture
Danni3ll3

I never really thought about the different meltability (Is that a word?) of cheese. After seeing that chart, what you said makes perfect sense. Funny how that part of the bread doesn't seem to have more of a Gorgonzola flavour or maybe I just didn't notice. Next piece I eat will be examined more closely. 

Lazy Loafer's picture
Lazy Loafer

Pears and cheese are so good together! I wonder if one could use fresh pears (I have tons of them right now; my tree was loaded this year)? I also wonder if the combination of soaked fruit, moist cheese and the oat soaker made the dough just a bit too moist? Maybe try the gorgonzola and pear without the oat soaker and see if that makes a difference to the crumb.

The crust looks fantastic! And it's always a bonus when the hubby says it's delicious... :)

Danni3ll3's picture
Danni3ll3

They use fresh pears in their recipe. Let me know how it turns out if you try it. Don't be afraid of the Gorgonzola either as it has a very mild taste and it doesn't stand out in the loaf at all. 

Lazy Loafer's picture
Lazy Loafer

Oh right, thanks Danni! I'll have to try that. Interesting method they have of folding the cheese and pears into the dough.

Danni3ll3's picture
Danni3ll3

when I added the nuts, pears and cheese into my dough but I did this at the beginning of the bulk fermentation, not after like they do. And I added some slaps and folds to give the dough some structure as well as to distribute the ingredients more evenly. 

joc1954's picture
joc1954

(The left one is pears,walnuts and gorgonzola bread, the right one is bread with bacon. Left one was baked in wood fired oven, right one in iron-cast skillet, the weight of dough was the same for both of them.)

Danni, could not resist  to make the same bread for a birthday party of my grand daughter last Sunday. Unfortunately I have just the picture of the outside because the bread vanished and was not fast enough to take a picture while there was still some available.

My observations are the following: I would have to use more stiff dough, mine was actually very wet and runny. I was baking several types of bread and for all of them I have used the same dough without any honey, just the additives were different and the major part was just a "sourdough". The gorgonzola  has also melted and was even leaking out of the loaf while it was baked in wood fired oven. Luckily I had put it on the parchment paper. Next time I have to use pears which are still quite firm and dice them to quite small cubes (1/4"). However, the taste was great and the crumb was very moist not just because of wet dough but also due to gorgonzola and mature pears.

 

Happy baking, Joze 

 

Danni3ll3's picture
Danni3ll3

I am glad they worked out for you inspite of the dough being super wet. Your flour might not absorb as much water as mine does. I understand that Canadian flour is especially thirsty. 

As to the Gorgonzola leaking out, I crumbled mine into very small pieces but it probably did the same as yours and migrated to the bottom since my bread was sort of gummy at the bottom. However, as you said, the flavour is amazing!

I am so glad you tried it!

joc1954's picture
joc1954

 

Last time this bread vanished before my wife could even try it. So I decided to make another try while I was baking for two parties, which will attend this afternoon.

I bought another type of blue cheese, slightly more firm on the outside than gorgonzola but with with a more mild taste. I also decided to make a loaf, put it in the pan covered with parchment paper. I was baking without steam but for first 30 minutes I covered the pan with aluminum foil to keep the steam inside the pan. I have used brunoise knife cut to make cubes of cheese and pears - size approx 5mm. After spreading the dough I put all adds - pears, blue cheese and walnuts and then rolled the dough and put it in the pan and retarded immediately for about 16 hours before bake.

The picture was made after cutting it still very warm as my wife could not wait long enough to cool down. I am quite pleased with the outcome and I am eagerly waiting for the comments of my neighbors when they will taste it in the afternoon.

The dough was prepared with poolish, home garden sage yeast water and SD starter. 

Happy baking, Joze

 

 

Danni3ll3's picture
Danni3ll3

That looks absolutely delicious! It looks like the firmer cheese did the trick and is more evenly distributed through the loaf. How does it taste compared to your last loaf?

joc1954's picture
joc1954

The taste was similar to the previous one, but was definitely different because the cheese was slightly milder in flavor, not so much expressed in the final taste. This time I used not so mature pears, actually quite very firm and therefore not very sweet. On the below picture  you can see that towards the edge of the dough there was less cheese and pears and the consistency is much better. So for next time I will use less pears and cheese what will likely improve the overall look & feel. This time the dough was less hydrated what also helped a little bit to prevent so much leaking of melted cheese.

I will be now searching for another type of cheese which will not melt so much and could be a decent replacement for gorgonzola. Definitely this bread will be on my list of experiments in order to improve it in future months.

Happy baking and thanks for support, Joze