Bread.
I wish I could write something truly inspirational, but I can't. It's not my thing.
However, being here is inspirational enough so I'm hoping that's enough for all of us. And bread is inspirational. Bread, one of the best form of carbs, we salute you.
150 grams of active sourdough
300 g wholegrain spelt flour (43%)
400 g wheat flour (57%)
500 g water (70%)
14 g of salt (2%)
A bit of oil
A bit of honey
Some oats on the top
The % are the percentage of the total amount of flour. It's a method used in baking if you want to increase or decrease the quantity being baked, but in this case, it could be used if you're not using grams! Wholegrain spelt + wheat flour is 100% and then water, salt and other ingredients can be counted as % of the flour amount.
So in this case, 500g of water is approx. 70% of the 700 grams of flour, so we could say the hydration is 70%.
Blah blah, not too interesting and now to the more boring part.
Add everything (except the oats) in a bowl.
Mix them together, just enough that they've all mixed. No need to knead.
Cover it up and let it rest. It's best to use an airtight lid/cover if possible so the surface will not dry up.
During the next few hours, you should stretch and fold the dough on a few different occasions.
Stretch and fold. I'm lazy and I'm doing it in the bowl.
It's important that the dough will not just come up, but that it's firmly attached from the other end so you need to pull it to make it stretch.
Then you just fold it together.
This is repeated multiple times until it starts to feel too firm to continue, as this stretching is done to strengthen the "gluten net" of the dough.
This is also a perfect chance to add seeds, nuts etc. in the dough, as you can stretch the dough and fold the seeds/nuts/gold coins/etc. in the dough.
The stretch and fold should be repeated 3 times during the first two hours of the dough rising. The total time the dough needs to rise is approx. 8 hours, depending on how active your sourdough is and how warm/cold it is in the apartment.
After the 8 hours, my dough looked like this.
I used two bread baskets for the bread. I added cotton cloth on each and finally the oats will be added. I just spread some oats on the cloth which is on the top of the bread basket. I didn't push the cloth down inside the basket, as the bread will push it down when it's put on the cloth.
So as we have two bread baskets, split the dough in two and form the pieces of dough as beautiful round bread-balls.
Just as I mentioned above, the dough will push the cloth down!
The bread & basket needs to be covered and left in room temp. for 30-60 minutes, then put in the fridge overnight (or for multiple nights).
I've taken a habit to bake the sourdough bread in the oven separately to make sure I'll always get fresh bread when I've finished the last one.
The oven should be preheated to 225 degrees Celsius before taking the bread out from the fridge. Now we can see the oats firmly (haha no they weren't) attached on the bread.
A single long cut to the bread, giving it some extra space to rise. If it won't be cut it can rupture randomly and turn into a less pleasant looking bread, but by cutting it in advance you can have an impact on how the finished bread will look like.
As you put the bread in the oven, you can reduce the temperature to 200 degrees Celsius and spray some water in the oven. This allows the bread to expand even more as the surface won't dry as quickly.
Almost there. The bread looked it could be ready but as I tested the internal temperature, it wasn't ready yet. A ready wheat bread should be at least 92-96 degrees Celsius on the inside.
The baked, finished bread is beautiful. The crust is crispy and and it's soft and almost juicy on the inside.
Can't describe too well. Bread is bread and it's good.
Also! Bread number 2 went in the oven the same day. I made a bit deeper cut on this and...
It turned out really good. Bread can be so beautiful even when I'm not trying any fancy tricks.
Please notice the oats which are already falling off. I can tell you, they were everywhere. My wife told me not to put any oats on the bread anymore. Can't blame her as having oats everywhere was terrible, but it made my bread look so pretty.
