Loaf 1: Forno Antico Santa Chiara Durum Wheat
I was lucky enough for a friend (FoodieVic) who recently visited Altamura to kindly bring me back durum wheat flour to make traditional Altamura bread of my own with. Tasting breads made with these flours really showed me the value in such an age old custom. It’s amazing they are still alive and well today and still in their original form. It’s fascinating to see her images of the bakeries that have changed only minimally throughout the centuries they’ve been in business. Check out her blog post here: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/61820/visiting-altamuras-two-famous-bakeries-oct-2019
I was given 2 flours pictured below (Picture courtesy of FoodieVic). Forno Antico Santa Chiara was more coarse and was the first one I used.
Reading up on Altamura bread it needed a starter. Since I don’t have one on the go right now I started a biga that aged about 7 hours before using. I used unbleached flour for this not wanting to take away from the durum flour because it was exactly enough for one loaf. This is not entirely authentic but turned out well all the same. Here’s the link: https://leitesculinaria.com/79243/recipes-biga.html it worked well for a quick pre-ferment.
Dough: for the bread, I used this recipe: https://www.pastamadre.de/single-post/2017/02/15/Pane-di-Altamura-aka-my-favourite-bread
· 500g Durum wheat flour
· 350g water
· 5g salt
· 100g biga
I used a bread maker to mix, knead and rise the dough for 2 hours. I am not accustomed to using a bread machine but was pleasantly surprised with the result. By letting it rise contained in the bread pan, it rose well. I was thrilled to see it came out a very similar texture to the video. I folded it twice and placed it on parchment and slid it onto a preheated pizza stone.
I used this technique for shaping: https://youtu.be/k08hJQNQ5pE
As you can see it opened up a lot at the seam and was quite porous considering the flour was so coarse. The texture was slightly gummy and dense. Very different from regular wheat flour bread. The recipe was quite low salt, so the flavour was mild but toasted nicely which brought out more flavour. It was still moist on the 4th day.
Loaf 2: Forno Antico Santa Caterina Durum Wheat
This flour was more fine. Trying to be authentic and only use durum wheat flour I used durum whole wheat flour in the biga. Because of the bran the texture was not as soft and glutinous as the unbleached wheat flour. It was more chunky and broke apart instead of stretching or stringing. I decided to make a loaf of just durum whole wheat flour as well as the Santa Caterina Durum Wheat to compare the differences.
I used the same biga recipe, substituting with whole wheat durum flour and letting it ferment for 43 hours, stirring every few hours. I used the same bread recipe as above and let them both rise on the stove under a plastic sheet in stainless steel bowls. This was not as warm, humid or temperature controlled as the bread machine. For this type of bread a warm summer day or a good proofer set up would be ideal.
I used the same shaping technique as above and baked them on a pampered chef stoneware pan.
The whole wheat durum was very dense and firm with a darker brownish grey colour. The recipe was low salt so the overall flavour was mild. The Italian durum turned out far better, with a more open crumb structure, softer texture and cleaner flavour.
It was fun to bake with these flours to see how differently they all turned out. I’ve never been to Italy but hope to make it there one day to try these breads in person!
