Sourdough Cocoa Sandwich Loaf with Orange Chocolate Chips - a lesson about eggs
Sending this to Yeastspotting [1].
Click here for my blog index. [2]
There are three types of sourdough breads I practice often: laminated dough (danish, puff pastry, and of course croissants), baguettes, and Asian style soft sandwich loaves. The appeal and punishment of them is that I can never get them prefect, which means I am forever trying to improve. In the case of soft sandwich loaves, the profile can always be taller (with the same amount of flour) & fluffier, the crumb can always be tighter and more "shredable", the mouth feel could always be softer and "bouncier". It's especially challenging when using a pullman pan with lid, not only the dough needs to be developed and fermented to pefection, the dough expansion control also needs to be precise, otherwise it either doesn't reach to the top, or the lid can literally be blown off! Recently I make it harder for myself to purchase a mesh cylinder mold, and the following is what would happen if you are not careful - much worst than a blown off lid if you ever try to clean this thing.
Anyway, let's rewind and go back to what happened. I used the following recipe:
Note: 19% of the flour is in levain
Note: total flour is 250g, fit my Chinese small-ish pullman pan. For 8X4 US loaf tin, I suggest to use about 270g of total flour. For KAF 13X4X4 pullman pan, I would suggest using about 430g of total flour.
- levain
starter (100%), 13g
water, 22g
bread flour, 41g
1. Mix and let fermentation at room temp (73F) for 12 hours.
- Final Dough
bread flour, 203g
cocoa powder, 10g
butter, 25g (softened)
egg, 62g
sugar, 32g
salt, 3g
water, 110g
orange flavored chocolate chips, 50g
levain, all
1. Mix everything but chocolate chips until stage 3 of windowpane (-30sec), see this post [3] for details. Add chips, mix until even.
2. Rise at room temp for 4 hours until double
3. For pullman pan, takeout, divide into 3 portions, round, rest for 20 min. shape as instructed here for sandwich loaf [4]. For the cyclinder mold, don't divide the dough, simply round and rest, then roll out to a rectangle with the same length as the mold, roll up like a jelly roll, put in mold.
4. rise at room temp for about 4-6 hours. For my pullman pan, it should be about 80% full; for US 8x4inch pan, it should be about one inch above the edge. The dough would have tripled by then, if it can't, your kneading is not enough or over.
5. bake at 375F for 20min, then 350 for 25min.
Note that egg ratio was 25% and liquid ratio was also pretty high, as the result, the pullman pan loaf came out super tall and proud.
Crumb was super soft and even. Cocoa + butter + orange flavored chocolate chips, the flavor was nice and delicious too.
All good until I saw how the dough was oozing out of little holes in the cycliner mold. It was so bad that I couldn't even open the mold myself, my husband had to pry it open, and eat it as following. Still yummy, but what a sad sight. I guess bigger is not always better.
Being the obessesive type, I immediately tried again. This time, lowered egg & water ratio, everything else remained the same.
Note: 19% of the flour is in levain
Note: total flour is 250g, fit my Chinese small-ish pullman pan or my cyclinder mold. For 8X4 US loaf tin, I suggest to use about 270g of total flour. For KAF 13X4X4 pullman pan, I would suggest using about 430g of total flour.
- levain
starter (100%), 13g
water, 22g
bread flour, 41g
1. Mix and let fermentation at room temp (73F) for 12 hours.
- Final Dough
bread flour, 203g
cocoa powder, 10g
butter, 25g (softened)
egg, 32g
sugar, 32g
salt, 3g
water, 100g
orange flavored chocolate chips, 50g
levain, all
1. Mix everything but chocolate chips until stage 3 of windowpane (-30sec), see this post [3] for details. Add chips, mix until even.
2. Rise at room temp for 4 hours until double
3. For pullman pan, takeout, divide into 3 portions, round, rest for 20 min. shape as instructed here for sandwich loaf [4]. For the cyclinder mold, don't divide the dough, simply round and rest, then roll out to a rectangle with the same length as the mold, roll up like a jelly roll, put in mold.
4. rise at room temp for about 4-6 hours. For my pullman pan, it should be about 80% full; for US 8x4inch pan, it should be about one inch above the edge. The dough would have tripled by then, if it can't, your kneading is not enough or over.
5. bake at 375F for 20min, then 350 for 25min. Phew, much better.
Used the lid for the pullman pan this time, also turned out well. No lid was blown off in the process.
I have always known in theory that eggs in dough would make the volume larger, but I guess I needed a show & tell to fully grasp the concept.
The flavor of these two versions were pretty close, but hey, the round pieces somehow tasted "more fun".
A word about those orange flavored chocolate chips, they were from http://www.worldwidechocolate.com/ [5] . I got a "grab bag" and that's one of the items. Adds a little color and flavor to the loaves, even though a bit "artificial". :P
Also used those chips in a cream cheese pound cake:
Recipe can be found here [6], but I used chips instead of apples.
I really like this pound cake, very moist from cream cheese.