I continued working through Ford's beautiful new book with a recipe better suited to my Azure "unifine process" hard red wheat flour. The result has a great sourness to it, and a relatively open crumb. My main disappointment was that I hoped it would rise more.
Like scorchia, Covid-19 led me to invest in a big bag of "ultra-unifine" bread flour from Azure. I've used it in place of white bread flour in a few recipes and decided it was time to let it shine in a classic-style sourdough.
For my first bake from Bryan Ford's beautiful new book, I was drawn to these "semitas de yema" for two reasons. First, their appearance - and, it turns out, the method - is similar to Asian "pineapple" buns, hitting the void that is within me, now that I am living far from the Asian bakeries of my home town. Second, I have previously experimented with using sourdough in enriched doughs but never seen a professionally written recipe that relies entirely on wild yeasts.
I was so inspired and moved by the response to PalwithnoovenP's challenge that I belatedly present my own entry.
There's a cooking blog I enjoy reading called Guai Shu Shu. I like this blog because the writer posts a lot of "home-style" recipes from various parts of south-east Asia (e.g. Singapore, Malaysia). I am really interested in the flavour combinations and cooking techniques from this region.
I've been experimenting with using chia seeds in my regular "low hydration" sourdough. I tried incorporating them in three ways.
1. Pre-soak 2 tablespoons of chia in 8 tablespoons of water. "Dimple" into the pre-dough along with the levain/starter.
I was inspired recently to try a different sourdough recipe, taking some time away from my favourite. Whereas Trevor's has only 50g levain/starter (about 5% of the flour is pre-fermented), the Bread and Butter Project's sourdoughs call for 275g starter (about 22% pre-fermented).
My latest bake was inspired by Ru007's double fermented oat porridge sourdough, omitting the seeds and nuts to keep it simple. I first tried this a fortnight ago and produced a pancake. I suspect this was due to over-fermentation. Ru007 already recommended reducing the final rise time, and I suspect my fridge doesn't get very cold.
Last weekend I conducted an experiment to test the theory that a larger quantity of sourdough starter produces a more sour tasting bread. On the face of it, this seems obvious, but I thought I'd read an alternative theory. The alternative theory is that less starter means a slower-proofing dough, which means more time for the sour flavours to develop.
