Today's bake: Blue Corn Sourdough
I kept at the experimentation with the blue corn sourdough after using some in the community bake. This time around was a bit simpler approach.
I started with 100 grams of 100% hydration starter
I scalded 75 grams of blue corn flour with 150 grams of water (probably wasn't enough water in hindsight as this is a thirsty flour).
I then mixed the starter with 300 grams of bread flour and 260 grams of water, 6 grams of salt. I made the dough higher in hydration thinking that the corn may dry it out some. After the mix and a rest I added in the corn. It was a bit clumpy but after a couple stretch and folds it finally was incorporated into the dough, more or less.
I baked this in a combo cooker, 20 minutes with the lid and another 25 without. It was pretty slack and moist when I did the final shape, so I was pleasantly surprised to see the decent oven spring.
It has a nice crisp crust and decent crumb, with swirls of blue (purple) and a few larger globs of corn. Not bad as an experiment.
Comments
That's a fine looking loaf. I've got some masa harina starter (not blue but I can get some blue corn masa harina) working away since yesterday and I'll give it a try.
TomP
I will look for your write up and photos!
I refreshed the masa harina starter through 3 refreshments and then made a levain. I wanted the corn flour to have 30% of the wheat flour weight, and I decided to put all of that into the levain. Of course that would absorb a huge amount of water, so I tried to compensate by reducing the water I added to the dough. For 30% masa harina I put in 50% water. The target dough hydration was 70%. I didn't know how much the water in the levain would contribute the the wetness of the dough so I held back a lot of water during mixing and then added more about 30g at a time. Eventually the total water I added during mixing came to 66% of the flour. That turned out to make for a wetter dough than I planned for.
Total wheat flour was 300g. Total masa was 90g or 30%. Because the dough acted fairly wet I used handling and stretching techniques that work well with high hydration doughs, and in the end the dough was fairly extensible and well handling though on the sticky side. I baked it longer at a lower temperature than I usually would have to try to drive oiut more of the moisture.
As you can see from the photos below, the loaf ended up with very good volume and height and a nice open crumb. The taste and crust are nothing special though, not what I expected from all that masa harina, and not as good as the similar white-rice-starter loaf I posted about a few days ago. So from the technique point of view this experiment was a great success - great rise and openness of crumb . It supports the idea of putting the non-gluten components into a levain. But from an eating point of view, not as good. Perhaps the flavor will come out as the bread ages. The rice starter loaf's did. Otherwise, maybe making a scald from part of the masa harina would be worth trying.
masa_harina_starter.jpg
masa_harina_starter-slice.jpg