Community Bake - Maurizio's Oat Porridge Sourdough
The Community Bake (CB) is featuring Maurizio's Oat Porridge SD. The bread is considered special because of the Oat Porridge. Both the soft texture and taste reflects the Oats in fabulous way. The bread is moist and keeps for a long time.
For those not familiar with our Community Bakes see THIS LINK [1]. The idea of a Community Bake is for those interested learning and baking as a group. Be sure to post the results. This way we can all learn together. This is not a bread baking competition, everyone wins! All bakers with any skill level are welcomed to join the bake.
Here is the link to Maurizio's bread formula and instructions. They are very detailed and easily followed.
https://www.theperfectloaf.com/oat-porridge-sourdough/ [2]
I have included a screen grab of my spreadsheet. The total dough weight is set to 1000 grams. For those that choose a single loaf, you can use the screen shot to calculate any size loaf you wish. Example, you want to bake a 700 gram loaf. Simply multiple each ingredient by .70 to find the proper weight. You could easily do a 500 gram loaf by dividing everything in half.
We especially welcome new bakers. This is a learning the sharing opportunity for all.
If anyone is interested in the excel spreadsheet, send me your email address via Personal Message.
The following are links to Past Community Bakes
- Lake Champlain Sourdough [3] by Trevor Wilson
- Fifty-Fifty Whole Wheat Sourdough [1] by Maurizio Leo
- Soughdough Baguettes [4] by Maurizio Leo
- 1-2-3 Sourdough [5] by Flo Makanai
- Five-Grain Levain [6] by Jeffrey Hamelman
- Maurizio's Oat Porridge SD [7] by Maurizio Leo
Danny
Maurizio has agree to answer questions concerning his Oat Porridge SD...
In order to consolidate these questions and/or comments they should be submitted to me (DanAyo) via PM. This way all questions will be consolidated (within this post), if necessary condensed, and duplicates culled. We value his time and know he is a busy guy. Please do not reply to this post with questions for Maurizio. Use my Personal Message (PM) instead. There is a reason to the madness...
1. Maurizio, have you experimented with lower hydrations? If so, what effect does less water have on the dough?
As many have discovered with a porridge-style recipe, when the hydration is too high in the dough it can quickly lead to a soupy, slack mess. When I developed this recipe I started out at too high of a hydration and quickly discovered it needed to reduce the water in the dough to accommodate the porridge added later. I never took the hydration much below what my recipes states now because I really did find the sweet spot with the flour used, but you could certainly reduce the water in the dough if desired. I’d expect more rise because there would be more strength in the dough, but I would also expect a less tender/soft result, even with the porridge. I think reducing the hydration in this recipe would be similar to any dough except that the porridge itself brings a lot of moisture to the end result, this means you could get away with a lower hydration dough expecting the porridge to bring more of it at a later time.2. Maurizio, it seems that a common issue with your Oat Porridge bread is the sticky, slack consistency of the dough. Please describe how oats affect the dough and what can be done to produce a dough with more strength? This is somewhat related to the hydration question above, and I see a few things one could do to strengthen the dough: 1) lower the hydration of the dough, 2) use a higher percentage of stronger, high protein flour, 3) reduce the porridge percentage, and 4) mix/knead longer. All of these will bring strength to the dough and give you more rise, perhaps a combination of each of these, in small amounts, could lead to a stronger dough overall without any negative side effect of pushing one of them too far. For example, you could decrease the hydration in the dough by 2%, increase percentage of high protein flour by 5% to 75% (while decreasing the whole wheat flour), decrease porridge by a small amount (or not), and mix/knead until the dough is much stronger or give it another set or two of stretch and folds during bulk. I find the oats hold on to quite a bit of water when they’re cooked, this water seems to get released in the dough during bulk fermentation as the dough mass ferments further. That’s one of the challenges with these types of breads: it’s hard to predict how the dough will turn out during bulk fermentation when the porridge breaks down and fermentation plays its part.
3. I was wondering about how he would recommend to bake this in Rofco. Same temp as for the dutch oven? I preheat at 260C and then turn down to 200 as othewise scores can glaze over too quickly or burn the oats... I was in general wondering whether stickiness has to do with not baking long or hard enough? I hope this makes sense? What I typically do is preheat at 250°C for 1.5 hours. Then I load the dough, steam, and turn the Rofco down to 170-180°C for 20 minutes. This essentially turns the heating elements off, this way the top of the dough doesn’t harden too fast and it allows the dough to expand maximally. After that 20 minutes, I turn the oven back up to 220°C for 10 minutes to give the crust some color (the heating elements will have kicked back on). After that, I turn the oven down to 150°C and finish baking, usually 10-20 mins depending on the bread. Essentially I’m toggling the heating elements on/off to give color and bake the exterior, the thick masonry stones should be plenty hot by this time and will continue to bake the loaves in an ambient way to ensure they’re baked through. If you don’t bake this bread out fully you will definitely have a gummy/dense interior. This can also be a sign of under proofed dough and/or chucks of oats not fully incorporated throughout.