Best way to incorporate mix-ins?
Hi everyone!
I've been experimenting with adding things like seeds, dried fruits, and olives into my sourdough these days and was wondering how other people get everything mixed in properly.
I've had the most trouble with olives as they are often quite moist and oily, so they don't stay put in the dough. For me, adding the mix-ins during my second to last set of stretch and folds gets them the most evenly dispersed. However, I've recently been favoring lamination and coil folds to maintain more air.
In my most recent loaf, I added chopped olives during the lamination, but the dough got very slippery and would not stick to itself. Also, many of the olives broke through the skin while shaping, and I wasn't sure how much that would affect the structure of the loaf. The crumb was great, but there wasn't much oven spring and the crust was rather thick and didn't stay crispy. Did the excess oil from the olives hinder the gluten and soften the crust? Should I pat the olives dry before adding them in or maybe don't stretch the dough so thin when adding the mix-ins? If anyone has suggestions, please let me know :)
I know this post is several days old now, but I have a theory on this: pat the olives dry, and give them a light dredge through some flour. I know this method is used for keeping blueberries from sinking to the bottom in blueberry muffins, I imagine it would also help the olives incorporate into your bread. As for the olives that break through the surface, I’m not really sure what, if anything, will prevent that. But olive-sourdough sounds amazing!
I’ve been adding my add ins lately during lamination. I cut all my olives in half but I didn’t try to dry them at all when they were the add ins. I found they were pretty well distributed by doing it this way, but you’re right some will break through to the outside over bulk fermentation during the ensuing coil folds. For olives, the bit of oil didn’t affect the crust and make it soft nor did it greatly affect the crumb and tenderize it.
Benny