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Sourdough Italian Bread: A SJSD Variant 

David M. Snyder

October, 2017

 This is one of my favorite breads. It uses the San Joaquin Sourdough method but a different flour mix and enrichment with a bit of sugar and olive oil. The dough is lovely to work with, and the flavor is scrumptious - both very tangy and rich. I have made a variety of breads with differing proportions of fine durum flour - from 10% to 100%. So far, I like the breads with 20-40% durum best, and this one best of all.

 One warning: I have fed this bread to family members and to attendees at an Italian community potluck. Every time, I have observed many individuals coming back repeatedly for "just one more slice." It does not seem truly addictive. I have not observed any abstinence syndrome ("withdrawal"), but I would exercise caution when offering it to others - reserve a loaf for yourself. 

1. Disperse the liquid starter in the water.

2. Add the flours and mix thoroughly.

3. Ferment at room temperature until expanded and bubbly (8-12 hours). If necessary, refrigerate overnight and let warm up for an hour before using.

Note: You will only use 100 g of the levain for this recipe. I usually make enough for more than one use. You can, of course, scale down the levain ingredients if you only want enough for this recipe.

Procedures

1. In a large bowl, disperse the levain in the water.

2. Add the flours and sugar to the liquid and mix to a shaggy mass.

3. Cover the bowl and let it rest for 20-60 minutes.

4. Add the salt and olive oil and mix thoroughly. (Note: I squish the dough with my hands until it comes back together, then do stretch and folds in the bowl until it forms a smooth ball and the oil appears completely incorporated.)

5. Transfer the dough to a 2 quart lightly oiled bowl, and cover the bowl tightly.

6. After 30 minutes, do stretch and folds in the bowl.

7. After another 50 minutes, do a stretch and fold on a lightly floured board. Repeat after another 50 minutes.

8. Continue bulk fermentation for another 30-90 minutes, until the dough is puffy. If fermented in a glass bowl, you should see lots of little bubbles throughout the dough. Volume of the dough may have increased by 50% or so.

9. Refrigerate for 12-36 hours.

10. Divide the dough into 2 to 4 equal pieces and pre-shape as rounds or logs. Cover with a clean towel, baker's linen or plasti-crap and let rest for one hour.

11. Shape as Bâtards, Demi-Baguettes or Ficelles.

12. Roll the loaves on damp paper towels, then in a tray of sesame seeds. Alternatively, you can brush the loaves with water and sprinkle with sesame seeds.

13. Proof for about 45 minutes seam-side up on parchment paper or seam-side down on linen, pleated to separate the loaves and supported at both long sides by rolled-up dish towels. Cover with a damp towel, baker's linen or plasti-crap.

14. One hour before baking, pre-heat the oven to 480ºF with a baking stone and steaming apparatus in place.

15. When ready to bake, uncover the loaves. Pull the parchment (or linen) from both long sides to flatten out the pleats and separate the loaves.

16. Transfer the loaves, on the parchment, to a peel, or, if proofed on linen, transfer using a transfer peel. Seam side should now be down. Score them as baguettes or bâtards, according to their shape. Transfer them to the baking stone. 

17. Steam the oven, and turn the temperature down to 460ºF.

18. After 12 minutes, remove the steaming apparatus. (Note: If you have a convection oven, switch to convection bake and turn the oven down to 435ºF for the remainder of the bake.) Continue baking for another 8-15 minutes or until the loaves are nicely browned and the internal temperature is at least 205ºF.

19. Transfer the loaves to a cooling rack. Cool completely before eating.

Enjoy!

David

I am not a fan of bananas but every now and then for my kids I make banana muffins, banana bread (quick bread), banana pancakes and cakes, and banana milk shake and smoothie just to remind myself why people like bananas.  Whenever the bananas in my house have gone sesame (ie, growing freckles), the motherly cook's instincts in me start eyeing on them.  I never force my kids to eat any fruit or vegetables.  That's why the house ends up having so many unlikely combinations of chutney and jams.

Now, I have not come across bananas in a savory, or at least non-sweet, combination with flour.  What if I inject that lovely banana flavor (not to me!) into the crumb of a sourdough bread and use it for sandwiches or just toasts?  Would it work?  No harm trying.

Step one:  I started with four very large ripe bananas (475 grams).  My idea was to use bananas as hydration for final dough.  To puree bananas in my blender efficiently, I need to add some sort of liquid, and I chose to add 20% of banana weight in water (95 grams).  I got 570 grams of banana puree.  In addition to that, I had 100 g of diced banana to put in separately.

Step two:  To decide on a dough hydration percentage.  I picked 65%.  For this I needed to make an assumption as to the solids to liquid ratio in the bananas - my guesses were 35% to 65% (like pumpkin). 

Step three:  To calculate how much flour and starter that I would need for the given amount of banana puree.

Step four:  To work back to see if the figures match up before starting on the dough.  

Well, was I in a hurry?  I didn't go through Step Four properly. Immediately after I got the preliminary flour and starter figures, I poured my banana puree over the starter eagerly and began mixing!! 

The formula that I used is as follows:

Formula for Banana Pain au Levain 

• 570 g mature starter at 75% hydration (5% rye flour)
• 570 g flour (5% rye and the balance white flour)
• 570 g banana puree (made up of 475 g banana and 95 g of water)
• 100 g extra banana diced
• 18 g salt

Total dough weight was 1.8 kg and approximate dough hydration was 80% (not 65% as I set out to do)**!! 

**Assuming bananas were 65% liquid, total dough hydration from the above formula was:

• (475 + 100) x 65% = 374, being hydration from bananas
• 374 + 95 = 469, being hydration from banana plus water added to make up the banana puree
• 570 / 175% x 75% = 244, being water content in starter
• 244 + 469 = 713, being total hydration
• 570 / 175% x 100% = 326, being flour content in starter
• 326 + 570 = 896, being total flour
• 713 / 896 = 80%, being total dough hydration

No wonder the dough felt very wet and sticky and 3 sets of stretch & folds were needed during bulk fermentation for dough strength.  This dough was very difficult to shape.  An ample dusting of flour on the work bench and quick, swift movement and minimalist handling during shaping were necessary.

Procedure

1. Bulk fermentation 2 + 1/2 hours with 3 sets of stretch & folds of 30 - 40 strokes each, including autolyse of 20 minutes.
2. Divide into two doughs of 900 g each.
3. Proof for 2 hours.
4. Retard in the refrigerator for 10 hours (I found with this recipe that the retarding process was essential because during the first few hours of the fermentation the dough appeared very sluggish.  It was almost as if my starter was finding it tough adjusting to bananas, but in any event, after many hours of retardation in the fridge, the dough rose nicely.)
5. Bake with steam at 210C / 410F (lower temperature than usual due to sugar content in bananas) for 20 minutes then another 25 minutes at 190C / 375F (Note: I baked one dough at a time. Lower heat and longer baking appear to be the way to go. Under higher temperature, the crust would just burn.)

My daughter said this bread smells heavenly-banana.  I don't know if that is possible but I have to admit that, for a person who doesn't like to eat banana, I find this sourdough very delightful.  It is incredibly moist - a slice of this bread on your palm weighs heavily.   The effect of bananas on dough is probably not dissimilar to potatoes on dough.  It is also very chewy and sour (at least medium strength of sourness to me).  There was no trace of the sweetness from bananas left in the bread. 

My son had a great idea - he spread peanut paste on a slice of this bread and grilled it.  It tastes amazing:

Well, if you are interested to try this formula, I would suggest a lower hydration for easier shaping and handling of the dough.  Below I calculate for you an approx. 72% hydration dough formula for a dough weight of 864 grams:

Formula for Banana Pain au Levain @ approx. 72% dough hydration

• 285 g starter @75% hydration
• 285 g flour (5%, or 14 g, rye flour and the balance 271 g white flour)
• 285 g banana puree (made up of 245 g banana and 40 g water)
• 9 g salt

If it is done right, I believe the simplicity of this formula allows the natural flavor of fermented flour come through and it is in the spirit of what Pain au Levain is about.

Happy baking!

Shiao-Ping

As many of you know, I've been questing for a tasty, open crumb, 100% whole grain hearth bread for a long, long time now.

This weekend, I finally achieved my goal.



Nice open crumb, creamy texture, tangy and flavorful crumb, appealing slashes, crunchy crust.

Here's how I made it, and, to be truthful, it was mostly on a whim. The day before, I'd made some whole wheat sourdough sandwich bread, and had about 80 grams of starter left over. I didn't have time, really, to feed it, so I popped it in the fridge figuring I'd do something with it later.

The next evening, as I was thinking about what to cook for a visit from my folks (they'd come all the way from Atlanta, so I wanted something nice), I thought, "Why not try something akin to CrumbBum's miche?"

So here's what I did:

• 40 grams of whole wheat starter at 60% hydration (Use 50 grams if at 100% hydration)
• 375 grams water
• 10 grams salt
• 300 grams whole wheat flour
• 150 grams whole spelt flour
• 50 grams whole rye flour