Bushturkey's blog

Sourdough baguettes - crumb

Sourdough (mini) baguettes

I made my own version of sourdough baguettes.

I followed Hamelman's five-grain levain recipe, but used 3 grains: Rye, Oats and a sprinkling of roasted wattle seed (Acacia baileyana) as a hot soaker.

The flour is 50% high-gluten flour, 25% bread flour and 25% whole wheat flour. Hydration was 98% (!), but almost all the water got soaked up by the seeds.

The dough called for a liquid levain, spiked with a little instant dry yeast 0.4%.

Olive levain - cooling out of the oven

Olive levain no.2 - crumb

Olive levain just out of the oven

Olive levain - crumb

The recipe called for a liquid levain. The flavour was extraordinary. I didn't know the flavour of the levain can change as much as it did (going from stiff to liquid).

Pain au levain

Pain au levain -crumb. Do you reckon he/she looks French and wearing a beret?!

I'll let you be the judge(s) about the success of this attempt! I live nowhere near Pointe-à-Callière, so I can't really call the bread by that name. Miche Source Alice (?Alice Springs  in French).

1. I should've read the instructions!

I started by elaborating a starter. I used a 100% culture and 100% wholemeal (100% extraction - it's what I had at home). I ended up with 970g starter! Hamelman's recipe had the culture as 20%(D'oh!).

I made this bread with a white leaven, elaborated to a starter, which was pre-fermented for 12 hours.

The finished dough had 108% pre-ferment starter, 30% wholemeal Spelt flour, 70% white bread flour and 75% hydration.

The flour and water were left to autolyse in the fridge for 12 hours before the starter, salt and a cold soaker of quinoa (I didn't weigh it so I don't know the percentage) were added and mixed.

 Panne Siciliano

Panne Siciliano - crumb

I found the flavour and texture to be better the next day (and not in the 2 hours after baking), and there was a little sourness. Is the durum flour meant to be sour? (My "sourdough" is not really sour and it's not previously imparted any sourness to breads).

Sourdough Ciabatta

I used the recipe from Peter Reinhart "The Bread Baker's Apprentice" - the Biga version.

My Biga was my white sourdough, mixed with an equal amount of organic bread flour and some water to make a firm starter.

I used half the oil given in Reinhart's recipe. I proved it on a couche (well, I got a length of thick cotton table-cloth material from a textile shop and hemmed the edge).