Dave's SFBI Miche (Almost)
Well with David's strong suggestion to make this loaf after talking of the Miche in "Bread" I had to see. I was mostly interested how this amazing loaf was mostly comprised of white flour. I had to see. I made 2 loaves @ 2 KG each. I went with the original formula David mentions with just a couple small changes. First Change was I made the Levain with all Central Milling T85 opposed to a mix of White/Wheat. I decreased the toasted wheat germ to 2% (because I had this much on hand). Finally I prepped a bit shy on levain so I proceeded with 11% pre-fermented flour opposed to 13% and made it up in the final dough.
A few changes I made were adding a short 30 minute autolyse with the levain included. I mixed using the pincer method.Then I decreased the folds down to only 2 folds @ 1 hour intervals because the dough had good strength and was lively after the second fold. The total bulk was 3 1/2 hours
I always like to bake my cold retarded loaves from the fridge and never proof them post retarding. The less hydration doughs do require or benefit from a 30-60 minute rest out of fridge to soften the cold skin. I did so with these but still got a bit too much spring. I think next time I'll let these proof for an hour or so at room temp prior to retarding and hopefully that'll hit the perfect mark.
The toasted wheat germ is the key to this loaf. It brings so much to this relatively simple dough. I've just cut it after about 10 hours (couldn't resist) You can see I shoulda waited til tommorrow based on the slightly moist base. Both loaves temped at 210 out of the oven after an hour and ten minute bake. They lost 15% water weight through the bake. When I did the Miche from "Bread" the loss was around 10%.
Tasting: Well at first bit this bread is sweet like dessert and has a wonderful chew that brings some nice mellow lactic notes. I'm imagining this will be fun to taste through the next few days.
Cheers
Josh