June 22, 2012 - 10:10am
My daily bread
This is a version of Vermont bread from http://homecookingadventure.com/recipes/easy-sourdough-bread-vermont-bread that I have baked probably 8 times now to get a feel for my starter strength and how a properly proofed loaf should respond. I am happy to say that each attempt has produced better results than the previous one. In this week's bake, I substituted chapati flour for the whole rye portion of the formula. I love the color and the flavor that durum wheat imparts to bread. To get better hydration of the chapati flour, I increased the autolyse period to several hours, which seemed to make the dough less prone to tearing (I have had this issue with breads containing any portion of chapati flour in the past).
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I've found that adding 10% Durum flour improves the rise and taste of sourdough bread. Building a preferment using only Durum flour as the first ferment will produce a nicely soured poolish - resulting long fermented San Francisco style sourdough French Bread made from it is surprisingly sour. The sour taste and linger is different from that produced by Rye Flour. Could this be a missing clue to the fabled Larraburu Bakery bread? It's beginning to taste like it...,
Wild-Yeast
Thanks for the feedback!
This is the first time I tried substituting durum flour (chapati flour, that's basically semonlina with the bran left in right?) in this recipe and the sourness was about the same as when I use rye. The only time I've produced a truly sour loaf is when I followed a similar recipe on your website for Norwich sourdough :) (no durum wheat). The main difference appears to be the hydration of the starter, but I'm quite new to sourdough baking (about 4 months) so I could have done any number of things differently as I've been learning and tweaking my methods. I was happy with the crumb structure and rise on these loaves, but again, I don't know if I can attribute that to the durum flour substitution alone.
I have tried making a preferment using only durum flour (30% durum preferment plus white flour in the main dough, experimenting with my own recipe) in the past with the result that the gluten was really difficult to build in the main dough and the dough started tearing during the proofing stage (poor bran hydration? over-ripe starter? hyperactive enzymes? overfermentation? all of the above, most likely). Once baked, these loaves had much more sourness than my current iterations of Vermont bread, although this could have been a result of severe overproofing in my early loaves. I used to think that sourness scaled with the quantity of whole grain flour in the dough, but I'm starting to think its much more closely associated with the hydration and % of prefermented dough (and probably a number of other factors like fermentation temperature/time, dough hydration, etc.). What type of durum flour do you typically use? I do agree that the finish of a durum loaf (sourness aside) is very different from that containing rye. Durum loaves start out nutty with a slightly grassy finish at times, while rye loaves tend to have a much more buttery finish.
I use Golden Temple Atta Durum Flour.
The starter uses 100 grams durum, 100 grams water and 10 grams sourdough mother starter. Allowed to ferment for 24 hours - then mixed with 150 grams organic red winter wheat flour and 80 grams of water. It is left to ferment at room temperature for 12 hours before being reserved under refrigeration in preparation for the main dough build - this usually occurs within three days, normally one or two.
Sourdough made with 10% Durum wheat using a high extraction flour starter kept entirely under refrigeration has no sour taste - even after a long ferment period of 6 hours and an 18 hour retard. It's my experience that the starter has to be sour in order for the resulting bread to be sour meaning that the innoculation of LAB has to be well represented in the sponge. It's one of those "whooda thunkits"...,
One thing that I've noticed about the Durum + Starter initial fermentation is that it undergoes a phase that produces a slight off smell [H2S + rotting meat?] just before the yeast becomes extremely active - the mixture is not sour at this point - it only becomes sour after the addition of the red winter wheat flour is allowed to ferment. I suspect that the Durum wheat fermentation period produces a highly conducive pre-growth environment for LAB. The addition of high extraction flour provides carbohydrates for further growth - a sort of prequel to the main souring event.
In any case it produces "Extra Sour" San Fancisco Sourdough French Bread [aka "Wharf Bread"] famous worldwide...,
Wild-Yeast
My mother starter lives in the refrigerator and only comes out when I need to make a preferment. Although the prefermentation happens at room temperature, I probably have a rather poor population of LAB in my mother starter. And now that I think about it, my first couple of loaves with the starter were a lot more sour because my starter was initially living on my kitchen counter. I rather like a mild/non-sour sourdough, but it's good to know the variables that push it in either direction.