Rye cup baker Revka El Baz experiments here with exciting spices in a recipe that yields two wheat sourdough breads.
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Ingredients
Durum flour, wheat flour (stone ground), fine wheat flour, water, sourdough, salt, honey, lemon zest, cream cheese, fresh rosemary
Tool
Two rising baskets and an iron pot.
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Dough time 3 hours Rising time: 10-36 hours Baking time: 45 min |
- 300 g durum
- 300 g wheat flour ( stone-ground, the light-sifted )
- 400 g fine wheat flour ( Kornby Mølle No.1 )
- approx. 850 g of water (50 of which are retained initially) - possibly only 750 g, if you are not used to handling a wet dough, but rye flour absorbs quite a lot of liquid!
- 150-200 g refreshed sourdough (depending on how hot it is and how long you want to let the dough rise. I'm not religious with my sourdough: it lives in the fridge and just comes out when I need it: I want to make bread up in the evening, I discard everything but a bottom slat and freshen up with cold water and light flour before I go to work in the morning. If I need to use it faster, it gets lukewarm water and coarse flour)
- 24 g of salt
- approx. 2 tablespoons liquid honey
- Grated rind from 1 lemon
- 3 mature tablespoons of cream cheese (not light!)
- approx. 2-3 tablespoons of finely chopped fresh rosemary
The method is a classic Tartine: the sourdough is dissolved in the water and the flour is added and just stirred together, after which it rests for approx. 1/2 hour. Then add the other ingredients, incl. the retained water: the lemon zest and rosemary are very small and light, so they do not prevent the dough from rising. Other types of ingredients I fold in later.
Then comes folding the dough over itself 3-4 times at intervals of approx. 25-30 min. - I'm not religious here either. It gets a few sets of folds when it just fits in with the evening's other chores, and when I think the dough is springy and nicely arched, I let it rest. In general, I leave the first rising quite short, especially here in the heat: a total of approx. 2-2.5 hours after the first rest period (auto light).
The dough is carefully turned out onto the table and divided in half, which I fold a few times and round. I let the pre-shaped loaves rest for 15-25 minutes, again depending on how hot it is. Then I turn them over, fold them again (a bit like an old fashioned envelope), carefully turn them over again and round them well and place them upside down in a rising basket dusted with rice flour. And then they rise in the fridge overnight.
I bake directly from the fridge, because then they hold their shapes better: Put in a cast iron pan and heat to approx. 250 degrees, put a loaf of bread in the pan (or in the lid, if you have a pan with a flat lid! if not, you can turn the bread out onto a piece of baking paper and lift it into the pan by holding a couple of snips: then you don't knock the air out by letting it dump down from a height of 20-30 cm...). The bread is scratched and given 20-25 min. with a lid, the temperature is lowered to 220 degrees, the lid off and approx. 25 minutes without a lid - or until it has the golden-dark color you prefer.
A little about the lemon-rosemary cream cheese addition: The cream cheese gives a very creamy and juicy texture, the rosemary can be turned up or down - some people think it's a strong taste, I can hardly get enough! And the lemon, well, it makes it all sing.
Enjoy
Revka El Baz
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