Pain de Campagne with Oat Bran
I've commented on this in the past, but it's remarkable how much neglect a starter can go through and still be able to rise well after a few feeds. I fed my starter Friday morning, then Friday night and again Saturday morning. Admittedly I used my proofer box after the Saturday morning feed. It hadn't been fed in a few weeks. I used all the starter from the previous feeds to build up volume and had no discard. My first feed was 1:3:3 and went 12 hours, my second was the same and went for about 14 hours, my third was 1:2:3 and went for about 6 hours to a triple in volume. I ended up with about 330 grams of starter.
While not what I intended, I ended up making a play on Forkish's FWSY Pain De Campage recipe as it calls for a high starter volume and I wanted to use up what I had made. My plans changed as I had been planing on creating a home brew American Ale beer yesterday AND make some bread and then reality set in. I was chewing off more than I could get done before dinner plans. I had no whole wheat flour in the house which compounded this. I ended up using only bread flour and to make it a bit more interesting found some left over oat bran in the pantry. For the two loaves I added 10 ounces (from a measuring cup - I should have weighted it I know) and 10 ounces (by weight) of very hot water to create a soaker while I did autolyse. I decided on 10 ounces of bran as that's all I had left in the bag. It was clumpy when wet so I it really required a lot of effort to break it down and incorporate into the dough. I did three or four folds, used a proofer at 77 degrees and by the time I was home after dinner the dough had more than doubled. The recipe called for 2 grams of dry yeast which I added to help the rise given the bran.
I baked this morning - so about 12 hours later - and clearly the dough was pushing the envelope of fermentation time. I baked in a combo cooker and achieved only a very slight rise. But this has to be the softest crumb I've ever baked. It's moist, lovely and flavourful. Every time I use anything bran in a recipe I'm more of a fan of it's impact on the crumb! I coated it in dark flax seeds.
Comments
very delicious bread! I am intrigued about higher starter/levain volumes in dough and there is a part of me that just wants to collect it from refreshes for a week put it into the fridge and then find out what I would get if I were to bake it? How much starter did you use for the bread? Kat
Hi Kat..
I also like the idea of using up starter and I think this is going to be my go to recipe for that need. I ALWAYS seem to have too much starter building up in the fridge despite my best efforts. The only problem is that you add discard to your jar or overflow containers and then it sits unfed for a while. So how do you then take 200g of left over unfed starter to a build up without creating more or doing a large bake?! I think next time I'm going to do this when I can be home to watch over an initial and then multiple 1:1 feedings. That will help keep down the build up.
In this recipe I used 330g of 100% starter built up over three stages. Around 4pm I mixed 800g of unbleached bread flour with very warm (on the verge of hot) 620g of water for half an hour autolyse. While that was happening I added the 150 degree water with the oat bran (10 ounces by weight and 10 ounces in a measuring cup respectively). I then added 2 grams of fleshman's active dry yeast with 22 grams of salt and the starter and mixed it well. Once that was incorporated I mixed in the bran mix which was still warm to the touch. It was clumpy so it took me a while to work out all the bits. At this point the dough was pretty wet and sticky. I put it into a dough rising bucket wit straight sides to see the progress and put that into my proofer box at 77 degrees. I gave it 4 stretch and folds every 30 minutes and then went to dinner. When I got home around 9:30/10 it was at 2.5x it's original size. I poured it onto the bench - seemed almost over-proofed but wasn't. I divided it into two loaves, pre-shaped, rested and then gave it a final shape (not too tight). They went into the banneton baskets and were covered overnight in the fridge. By about 9am they had expanded another 50% or so and were pretty giggly and I gave them a normal bake. They may have risen about 25% in the combo-cooker IF that.. they were in my mind at the very edge of being a disaster from over fermentation. But when cooled had a fantastic mouth feel, super soft crumb, very thin crust and pretty delicious taste.
Including the starter this breaks down to 965g of flour, 1069g water, 115g oat bran, 22g salt, 2g dry yeast. I converted the bran/water amount into grams to make it easier. In percentage terms then 100% bread flour, 110% water, 12% oat bran, 2% salt, 0.2% dry yeast (numbers rounded). I didn't appreciate until just doing the math how much water I had in that loaf. I think that's the highest I've ever baked with. Maybe my perception of it being on the very edge of over fermentation is wrong and it's more about the level of water that I was using. Either way, it was/is some good eats as Alton Brown would say!
That's it! Over to you! Have fun.. thanks, frank!
That's a really beautiful loaf! You did an amazing job with what you had on hand! I would definitely like a piece of that! Well done!
I don't deliver but pick up is always available! :)