This sourdough bread is a little different than most of the “straight” doughs I’ve been baking in that it incorporates a little bit of honey. This recipe also uses a large portion of whole wheat flour. I’ve used a White Whole Wheat flour, so the final bread looks similar to a bread made with mostly processed white flour.
As always, I let my starter rise overnight. You can see here that it went a little past its peak and started to fall before I started the bake.
I gathered the mise en place. You can see in the largest bowl how similar in colour the white and whole wheat flours are.
I added all the ingredients into the bowl and mixed until all the flour was incorporated. The dough was very shaggy.
The dough rested for 15 minutes, then I kneaded it by hand using the slap and fold method until the dough was smooth.
The dough rose in an 80 degree Fahrenheit proofing chamber for 2 hours, with a fold at the 1-hour mark.
I divided the dough into two and pre-shaped each loaf into a rough round. I covered the rounds and let them rest for 20 minutes.
Once the dough had rested I did the final shaping and placed them into bannetons to rise. The final rise was very short – only 30 minutes. I feels odd to allow Sourdough to rise for such a short time, but you can see in the photos that we did get some decent expansion during this period.
I turned the doughs out onto parchment and scored them before putting them into their baking vessels and into the oven.
I baked the loaves for 15 minutes, then took the lids off the baking vessels, lowered the oven temperature, and baked for 20 minutes more.
These loaves turned out so beautiful. I love scoring a bread and seeing how it bakes up. It’s a skill I want to practice more. The crumb of the bread is very nice, with small holes evenly distributed throughout the loaf. The bread has good rise and doesn’t taste or feel like a bread with significant whole wheat content.
Making butter at home seems to be the new trend, and I couldn’t miss out on this one. I bought 1 quart of heavy cream, and whipped it in my Kitchenaid mixer. I started with 5 minutess on speed 4, then 5 minutes on speed 6, 5 minutes on speed 8, then a further couple of minutes on speed 10. I’ve never used speed 10 before on my mixer. In total, it took my KitchenAid 17 minutes to whip the butter until it broke into curds. I washed the butter in icewater 3 times to expel the buttermilk and help the butter curds adhere to each other in a block. This step was so messy and exasperating. I hated it.
I ended up with a block of butter similar in size to 2 normal sticks of butter (I didn’t weigh it) and ~1/3 cup of uncultured buttermilk.
With the bread cooled and the butter made, it was time to taste. The bread is very good: fluffy, and not at all dense. It’s slightly sweet from the honey, and that helps the bread taste a little less sour. This bread is only minimally sour due to the short rising time and warm rising environment.
The butter turned out ok. Maybe I’m spoiled because I usually buy very high-quality butter, but this butter seemed very similar to the butter I buy in stores. I did taste a hint of something that I could only describe as floral in the butter the day I made it. It was an odd taste for butter. After a few days in the fridge the flavor was more pronounced, and I labeled it as “fridge flavor.” I’m not sure why my fresh butter would have had this flavor the day it was made. I did learn that it’s important to store fresh butter in an air-tight container, which must be why the better butter brands wrap their butter in aluminum foil. Ah, well, not every venture can be a success.
Until the next time: may your yeast always rise and your flour never run out.
A Baker's Education 