Buttermilk Bulgur Loaf

Not exactly sure why, possibly Benny’s latest poppy seed eye popper or possibly Passi(io)nate Tom’s explorations, but I got inspired to revive an old family favorite that’s gone missing since I dove into baking with sourdough. For most of our boys’ childhood, my darling wife made bread 2-3 times a week. Her quest to increase whole grain consumption eventually yielded  an awfully good loaf starring whole wheat flour, bulgur wheat (wheat berries just wouldn’t cooperate), wheat bran, raisins, rolled oats and nuts.

So, I thought, could we revive that loaf possibly with a liquid levain, biga (still searching for reasons to use it in lieu of poolish) and buttermilk (had some hanging around for too long)?

I started with a target dough weight of 2.5 kg for 3 loaves. After soaking 180 g of bulgur wheat, I ended up with 500+ g of soaker, so now my target dough weight was 2 kg which at 74% hydration and 14% other enrichments took the flour target down to about 1.05 kg which was composed of 40% bread, 50% AP (over half of that in the pre-ferments) and 10% whole wheat. 300 g liquid levain at 100% hydration and 200 g biga at 50% hydration provided the fermentation engine.

I mixed up the levain, biga flour, buttermilk (plus a little whole milk) and then I started ad libbing. My wife’s legacy method ground raisins, oats and nuts in the food processor, so I followed suit with 100 g each, with pecans providing the nutty component. Couldn’t really treat this mixture like a soaker as the dry oats would surely consume some of the dough’s liquid portion. A quick test on 20 g of oats showed that they would absorb 150% of their dry weight in water. So now I added an extra 150 g of milk along with the 300 g of the mixture. Then the bulgur wheat and a bit of butter landed in the dough which was now approaching 3 kg total weight of some unknowable hydration.

What was clear was that a less than 2/3 of the dough was glutinous and I was getting concerned that there would not be enough gluten network to support the 800+ g of inclusions. But the dough texture seemed right after 10 minutes of kneading in the Ank.

2 hours of bulk with stretch and folds, then shaping 3 850g loaves and a single baguettish freestanding loaf which proofed for another 3 hours at 80° F. It seemed like bulk and proof went quite a bit faster than expected. Unclear as to whether the biga made a difference. Final results were really very good. A good moist crumb with a chewy crust (crisp and crackly when toasted). Toasted slices made great sandwiches with pâté de campagne, red onions and sriracha mayo.

As for the biga I’m still undecided…but next batch of baguettes will see if I can approach the crumb of master Wilson’s incredible lievito madre bags recently described. Until next time, a biento.

Phil