Honeyed Oats with Seeds Sourdough
My brother requested some bread to go with Xmas dinner so I went back to my adaptation of MutantSpace's bread and changed the seed combo a bit. This was also the bread that I used to do the experiment with baking in a cold oven with a cold dutch oven or baking in a hot dutch oven in a preheated oven. The wider loaves on the right were the ones baked in the cold combo pot and oven. They spread out more and ended up with a peaked appearance rather than a full rounded one like the loaves done in the hot pot and oven. Either way, the bread had a very nice mouthfeel and was delicious!
On to the recipe (makes 4 loaves of about 650 g):
1. Toast 75 g of sunflower seeds and 50 g each of flax and black sesame seeds.
2. Soak the above overnight with 225 g rolled oats, 90 g of honey, 75 g of butter and 360 g of boiling water.
3. The next day, autolyse all of the above with 650 g water, 75 g freshly ground flax seeds, 550 g unbleached flour, 200 g of freshly milled red fife flour and 202 g of multigrain flour (I use Robin Hood's Best for Bread Multigrain flour). Let sit for at least a couple of hours.
4. Mix in 24 g salt and 266 g of 100% levain. Mix until everything is evenly distributed and you can feel the dough gaining some strength through folds.
5. Fermentation took about 4 hours. Fold 30 minutes to 45 minutes apart for the first 2 folds and then 45 to 60 minutes apart for the last few folds until the dough feels nice and billowy. I waited till I saw signs of bubbles around the edges. Normally, when I do this, my dough doesn't double but in this case, the dough was rising quite fast and it almost doubled by the time it was ready to be divided.
6. Divide into 4 and preshape into boules. Let rest 20 minutes and then do a nice and tight shape. I have been trying the shaping as shown in this video [1] but I am way more gentle and I don't degass the dough the way Hamelman does.
7. Sprinkle the bannetons with rice/ap flour first and then some rolled oats. Place the dough seam side down into bannetons and cover the dough. Place in the fridge for 10-12 hours.
8. Heat oven to 475 F with pots inside for 45 minutes. Bake seam side up in preheated covered dutch ovens (lined with parchment rounds) for 25 minutes at 450 F and then uncovered for 22 minutes at 425F.
9. If you wish to try the cold oven/cold pot method, what I did was place the dough on top of parchment rounds in the room temperature dutch ovens. I then placed the covered pots in the oven and turned the temperature to 450 F. The oven took 23 minutes to heat up to that temperature. I left the lids on for an additional 20 minutes and then took off the lids and dropped the temperature to 425 F for an additional 22 minutes.
Loaf on the left is the "hot baked loaf" and the loaf on the right is the "cold baked loaf".