2h • 💬 General Discussion
Making excellent artisan sourdough bread with inexpensive flour…
First Street brand High Gluten flour, $0.48 per pound & All Purpose flour, $0.62 per pound, that nobody has ever heard of… blended 50/50%. Including the flour in my starter, Hank, the high gluten flour is 50% of the total flour. The All Purpose is 45%. And then the WW & Rye in Hank makes up the other 5% of the total flour.
My mission is to get the dough to pass the windowpane test with as little gentle touching as possible… before it’s transferred into the bulk fermentation vessel, so I don’t have to babysit it throughout the bulk fermentation process… part of my First Principles method of making sourdough bread, less is more.
Formula: 100/75/2/20
Recipe: 2 loaves
540g high gluten flour
540g all purpose flour
780g water… hold back 30g to use when mixing in the salt after the Fermentolyse
240g Hank = 100% hydration 60g HG flour + 30g ww flour + 30g dark rye flour
24g salt
- Mix everything together using 90° water, except the salt and 30g of held back water. Fermentolyse for 1 hour. Dough temperature 86°f.
- add the salt and held back water dimpling it in and flipping the dough over in the mixing bowl and us the rubaud mixing method for about 2 minutes. Dough temperature 84°f. Rest for 30 minutes.
- Do about 10 repetitions of slap & folds to build gluten structure a little faster. Do the windowpane test, almost passes but not quite. Dough temperature 83°f. Rest for 30 minutes.
- Do coil folds. Do windowpane test and it passed. Dough temperature 82°f. Transfer to bulk fermentation vessel. The dough is 4” from the bottom of the vessel and I intend to stop bulk fermentation when the dough has risen 25% so I mark the 5” level on the vessel.
- Put the bulk fermentation vessel on the heating pad set at 84°f and leave it uninterrupted until it reaches the desired 25% rise at the 5” level. Dough temperature 81°f.
- The dough has reached the 25% rise in about 90 minutes. Dump the dough on the bench and divide it with my 9” wide bench knife/dough scraper and preshape it with the bench knife without touching it by hand 🖐️ because I don’t want to pop bubbles. Cover with inverted mixing bowls and bench rest for 20 minutes.
- Final shape both loaves. Put in plastic wrapped bannetons without any flour on the dough, top or bottom, cover the dough with another bowl cap plastic bag to prevent evaporation while in the fridge.
- Put both bannetons in the 38°f fridge while the dough is 80°f. Knowing fermentation will continue at a slower pace for hours. While the enzymes and acid will continue building flavor all night.
- Next morning, today, time to bake… baking steel @500°f with baking shell to cover the dough during the oven spring process. I haven’t used my Dutch ovens even once since a friend got me this baking steel for Christmas. It’s gives me better results, it’s much easier to handle, and safer too.🤷♂️
Everything turned out just fine. So it took me a few experiments to come up with the right percentage of the blend but…
The 50/50 HG/AP blend may actually be the perfect formula.
Because what they do together is very effective. The HG is too strong & the AP is too weak but combined they’re magic.
The HG flour contributes:
- strength,
- elasticity,
- gas retention,
- oven spring.
The AP flour contributes:
- extensibility,
- tenderness,
- openness,
- and less “rubber-band” resistance.
So together:
they moderate each other.
So in view of the fact that Bob’s Red Mill bread flour costs me $1.50 per pound and King Arthur is $1.30 per mound I see much less expensive bread flour in my future…🤷♂️
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Making excellent artisan sourdough bread with inexpensive flour…
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