Grilled Plantain Sourdough

  A couple of nights ago I grilled some ripe plantains brushed with some olive oil and sprinkled with some cinnamon sugar.  As you can imagine it tasted amazing and I could have eaten the whole thing all by itself.  Luckily I managed a small amount of self-control and saved enough to use in a bread.

I have made a plantain bread in the past, but this time I used a completely different flour mix and ingredient list and I have to say it couldn't have come out any better.

I used the 36 hour technique which I recently posted about last week and it delivered again with a moist, open crumb and crusty crust.  I added some Greek Yogurt which really upped the hydration although it is not indicated as such in my formula below.  This dough was very wet and was not easy to handle when shaping.  To make matters worse, I baked this today while working and forgot to add extra flour to my bakers linen and ended up with some stickiness issues.  I should know better, but in the end the bread came out great anyway.

I also used some walnut oil to add a hint of nuttiness to the final bread.

I hope you give this one a try and I am sure you will love it.

Directions

 Starter

Mix ingredients in a bowl until thoroughly combined.  Cover the bowl and let it sit at room temperature for around 8 hours.  The starter should almost double when ready to proceed.

 Main Dough

Mix the flours, yogurt and the buttermilk together in your mixer or by hand until it just starts to come together, maybe about 1 minute.  Next add the plantains and mix for another minute.  Put the dough in a slightly covered oiled bowl and put in the refrigerator for 12 hours.

The next day add your starter, oil and salt to the dough and mix by hand until it is thoroughly mixed and evenly distributed.  Due to the high water content in the 100% hydration starter this dough is very easy to mix by hand and is very silky and smooth.

Bulk rise at room temperature for 2-3 hours until it grows around 1/3 in volume doing stretch and folds every half hour until it has developed the correct amount of strength.

Put the dough back into the refrigerator for around 20-30 hours.

When you take the dough out of the refrigerator you want it to have almost doubled in volume.  Mine only rose about 1/3 in volume.  Let it rise at room temperature for around 2 hours or until the dough has doubled from the night before. (I used my proofer set at 83 degrees for 2 hours).

Next, shape as desired.  I made 2 loaves and placed them on my bakers linen.

Let it sit at room temperature for 1.5 to 2 hours.

When the dough is ready to bake, score as desired and prepare your oven for baking with steam.

Set your oven for 500 degrees F. at least 45 minutes before ready to bake.  When ready to bake place the loaves into your on  your oven stone with steam and lower the temperature immediately to 450 degrees.   When the loaves are nice and brown and reached an internal temperature of 200 degrees F. you can remove it from the oven.

Let the loaves cool down for at least an 3 hours or so before eating as desired.