Enriched true-sourdough trial #1: 'roti gambang' 50% hydration brioche (cinnamon, dried bananas, palm sugar)

This is my very first true sourdough enriched bread ever HAHAHAHA (can't you tell how ecstatic I am? Oh, and not counting my potato loaves). It was a lot of trials and errors with my starter and fermentation schedule. Oh boy, glad I'm finally here.

Cariah Marey has settled on satisfactory ratio. She is 1:1:1:1 bran:skim-milk-powder:water:butter at the moment. Skim milk lends lactose to increase osmotic pressure, while butter is there as ankle weight. She had little tolerance toward butter. Putting butter in the starter allows her to adapt over time, and she already has.

She feels like a male stripper at the moment, and asked to be called by his stripper name. Say hi to Tragic Mike!

"Bonjour, bee-cheese!"

This bake is my take on Dutch-Indonesian scone called roti gambang. Roti gambang is always chemically leavened, and the texture is even and dense. The flavors of roti gambang are cinnamon (cassia, to be precise) and palm sugar.

Ilustration, roti gambang

I was thinking about doing angel-biscuits approach, but I feel angel biscuits are too rustic, and I want something that can be refined cosmetically (this bake is a prototype, so I wasn't concerned about cosmetics yet)

This bake is basically a hybrid of brioche and pain brié. It has the richness of brioche and the density of pain brié. The idea is to get closer in texture to the actual roti gambang. Beside that, it's a good starting point to my enriched-sourdough learning process, since it's low hydration and on lower-end of higher sugar-percentages (dried banana bits lend added sweetness).

This batch has 35% butter. Eggs and butter are sole sources of hydration. This batch has 50% hydration, 15% sugar (including lactose), and 20% homemade dried bananas. I used the fabled, fragrant gros michel bananas, which apparently hard to export, since gros michel is susceptible to diseases.

Ilustration, gros michel bananas

I did 2-stages levain. The first levain lasted 4 hours, the second lasted 12 hours. The final proof took 9 hours. No acetic smell, and the acidity is as subtle as poolish baguettes. And the ambient temperature was no less than 30 °C! Mindblowing, I know!

I'll put the formula down here for 4 days. If doesn't appear, it's deleted. Every 16 grams of starter is assumed to have 4 grams fat and 2 grams sugar. Skim milk is assumed to have 52% lactose. Eggs are assumed to have 73% water. And I don't bother calculating total fat hahaha!

Verdict

I love the flavor, so do my test subjects. They taste like a hug. No acetic smell, acidity as subtle as poolish baguettes. They are dense as intended, but a lot lighter than the actual roti gambang. I won't change a thing formula-wise, but definitely will work on cosmetic aspects.

I didn't do pretty shots, I'm too beaten up. I have bipolar disorder, and in the middle of depressed episode. So currently I have to be really careful about my energy expenditure.

I have one more interesting viennoiserie trial in mind, but I have to take a step back for awhile.

Jay