Benny’s Country Sourdough 80% hydration
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I have settled on this formula for my go to plain sourdough as I like the flavour and in fact it can act as a nice basis for most inclusions. I had been playing around with ratios of low protein vs high protein flours hoping to enhance the oven spring and crumb and I’m hoping that it worked.
Overnight levain build 1:6:6 72ºF
7 g starter + 44 g water + 44 g red fife
Dough build Mix ingredients for saltolyse
Bread flour 250 g
All purpose flour 10% protein 150 g
Whole red fife 30 g
Whole rye 25 g
Water 340 g
Salt 9.97 g
Diastatic Malt 2.49 g
Levain 90 g
In the morning mix 90 g of levain into the dough and add a further 15 g of water if your dough requires it, mine did.
Rubaud mixing for 5 mins followed by a 5 min rest.
The slap and folds x 400 with a 5 min rest in the middle.
Try to fully develop the gluten at the start of bulk.
Bulk ferment at 74 *F
Then 15 mins rest.
Strong bench letterfold then rest 30 mins
Lamination then start a series of coils folds at 20-30 mins intervals to build structure until the dough doesn’t spread very much after coil folds. I did six coil folds over 2 hours then allowed the dough to rest until it had risen (not the aliquot jar) about 50% or so. Because I use a square low Pyrex dish it is hard to judge rise, but the dough should be very jiggly and domed and have bubbles on the surface.
Preshape in a fairly taut boule, then rest 20 mins.
Final shape, dust with rice flour and place into banneton for cold retard until next day.
Preheat oven 500ºF with dutch oven inside.
30 mins before oven is ready place the dough in banneton into the freezer to firm it up in preparation for attempted decorative scoring.
Remove dough from banneton, smooth out rice flour on surface and score. I am obviously not very artistic but attempted to score a couple of leaves on my dough.
Transfer to dutch oven and place lid on.
Drop temperature to 450ºF and bake 20 mins.
Next drop temperature to 420ºF and bake another 10 mins with the lid on.
Remove lid rotating the dutch oven and bake another 10 mins.
Remove bread from dutch oven and bake on the rack for 10 mins.
Check doneness the bread may need another 5 mins or so.