So I've been wanting to experiment with enriched dough more, because I have bruxism (I clench my teeth while I'm sleeping) and this makes it not pleasant to eat more than a small amount of tough, hard, or chewy food in a day. My jaw gets all clicky and crampy. Ow. So this is a problem for eating chewy sourdough bread with a nice crisp crust.
Background: all my bread is made with 100% whole grain flour milled with a MockMill 100.
I recently started baking a spelt treacle loaf that's a bit more tender just because spelt is more tender, but I wanted to go for something even a little softer, and try some different flavor profiles.
The two-loaf experiment:
Last night I overnight autolysed 900 grams of flour (3/4 hard red wheat, 1/4 spelt) with 720 grams of water. So about 80% hydration.
This morning I split the dough mass in half.
- I inoculated one of the dough masses with 130 grams of 100% hydration whole wheat sourdough starter, added a glug of extra virgin olive oil, and 9 grams salt.
- The other dough mass, I inoculated with 230 grams of whole wheat poolish at about 110% hydration, added a blob of barley malt syrup, a few tablespoons of salted butter, and 9 grams of salt.
I followed my usual routine with each: bench knead for about 3 minutes to mix, then about 3 minutes more of Rubaud slap-and-fold to finish gluten development. The butter-treacle poolish loaf is quite a bit wetter from the addition of so much poolish and then the treacle. But it still seems ok. We'll see how I do when it comes to trying to develop tension in the dough. Here's a photo of my two doughs on the Wedgewood prooving shelf.
Of yogurt to tenderize the crust of my breads. About 30 g per 1100 g of flour. It’s not a lot but it really makes a difference. I have also used kefir and buttermilk in the past but now use full fat local yogurt.
We always have yogurt in the house. I'll have to give it a try. I assume you adjust hydration a bit when you add the yogurt?
I did at one point but it’s such a small amount that I no longer bother. Just toss in a couple of tablespoons (about 30 g) for 1100 g of flour. That includes the flour in the levain.
Just did the math. It’s 0.027% so 0.03% of your total flour would be close enough.