Spiced Raisin Sourdough
I have been wanting to make a cinnamon raisin recipe but after my last experience with cinnamon (bread took forever to rise and I found out that cinnamon impedes the growth of yeast), I have been wary of it. I found a recipe here on TFL that seemed to account for the cinnamon’s action on yeast and it had a lot of good reviews. So here is my adapted version from that adapted version from the Bourke Street Bakery Spiced Fruit Sourdough Recipe.
Spiced Raising Sourdough Recipe
adapted from MadAbout B8’s version of Bourke Street Bakery: Ultimate Baking Companion [1]
Makes 3 loaves
INGREDIENTS
Unbleached flour 768 g
Freshly milled Red Fife flour 112 g
Water 620 g
Sourdough starter (100% hydration)465 g
Salt 22 g
Ground cinnamon 2.25 tsp
Mixed spices 3.5 tsp
(4 parts cinnamon to 1 part each of ginger, clove, nutmeg, and coriander.)
Golden raisins (sultana) 358 g
Yogurt35 g
Freshly Ground flax seed50 g
- Add all the ingredients to the mixing bowl, except salt, raisins, cinnamon and mixed spices. Mix until the ingredients are incorporated. Leave it to autolyze for one hour.
- Mix raisins with cinnamon, mixed spices and yogurt. Reserve. (I think that next time, I would soak the raisins for an hour or so, drain them, add the yogurt and the spices to them and then go on with the recipe)
- Sprinkle salt over the dough surface and mix well. Fold until until a moderate gluten development is achieved.
- Let rest for a half hour to relax the gluten and then incorporate raisins, cinnamon powder and mixed spices into the dough until well combined. I did this by sprinkling some of the raisins, doing a fold, sprinkling more raisins, doing another fold until all the raisins were in the dough. Then I let the dough rest a bit and then did more folding to make sure the raisins and spices were evenly distributed. I did add a few grams of water here as I found the dough a tad dry. The water helped rehydrate and distribute the raisins.
- Leave the dough in a warm spot and cover the bowl. After one hour, do one set of stretch and folds. Let rise till doubled in size.
- Divide the dough into three ~830 g portions. Pre-shape the doughs into rounds and let them rest for 15-20 minutes.
- Shape the doughs into boules and place into bannetons and cover. Place the dough in the fridge overnight. The recipe says you can also proof at room temperature for 2 hours or until almost double in size.
- I baked some batches right out of the fridge and found I got a better oven spring than when I followed the recipe which said to let the dough rise for an additional 60-90 minutes after it came out of the fridge. I followed my usual baking method which is to preheat the oven and the dutch ovens to 475 F, load the dough into the pots (parchment rounds in the bottom of the pots prevent sticking especially with the fruit in there), drop the temp to 450 F and bake covered for 25 minutes. Uncover and bake for a further 25 minutes at 425 F.
I just had a few pieces and I must say, the spices really give it a zing in your mouth. It is super tasty and I was pleasantly surprised to see that the crumb was as open as it is. I was expecting a much tighter crumb based on the weight of the loaf.
I did do a quite a few things differently than I usually do based on Trevor’s book. I did a three stage levain build 1:1:1, 1:2:2 and 1:3:3. Using a 100% levain is different for me but I figured I better stick fairly closely to the recipe. I usually use ~80% hydration levain. Another thing is that I never include the levain in the autolyse; being faithful to the recipe again! I was also way more gentle at the shaping stages. I have been degassing my dough quite firmly and did not do that this time. I handled it with kid gloves. ;-)