85% Durum Bread

Durum Bread-- mmm...delicious

I've been away from the blog for a little while. In fact, I was a way from my computer for quite a while because my migraines were so bad that I couldn't look at the screen. I'm heading out to the neurologist in a few weeks, but things have subsided for the moment so I'm back.

Today, I baked a loaf of durum bread. I've been salivating over it ever since I saw Cordruta's recipe. I had to make sure that I had both semolina and fancy durum flour in order to make it. I usually don't have much of the fancy durum, as I can only seem to find it at King Arthur and it's fairly expensive.

Delicious-- although the crumb is much more golden in person

Cordruta said that it was it was one of the best breads she ever made. I decided only to make one in order that I should not use up too much of the precious flour. This was a mistake-- the bread is unbelievably delicious. Maybe not my favorite ever, but one of the top few. I expected it to have a warm nutty flavor, but I was wrong. While the crust has a bit of durum's usual nuttiness, the flavor has sort of a slightly sweet, creamy flavor-- smooth and delicate. It is absolutely delicious. I highly recommend this bread to all bread bakers.

The bread came out a little flat and didn't show much oven spring. However, the crumb was gorgeous (see above and below). It wasn't nearly as yellow as Cordruta's, sadly (although it was noticeably more yellow than it turned out in the pictures).

Bread is a little flat, but has beautiful exterior color.

85% Durum Bread

Ingredients

• 140g whole wheat sourdough starter
• 225g fancy grind durum flour
• 170g semolina flour
• 280g water (separated into 260g + 20g water)
• 9g salt

Directions

Day 1:

• Mix the starter, flours, and 260g water until they form some sort of homogenous mixture
• Autolyse the dough for 30 minutes at room temperature (around 76 degrees)
• Mix the salt into the remaining 20g of water and gently incorporate this into the dough. Be very careful not to disrupt the gluten. Also, don't over-knead the dough-- it should develop nicely on its own over time. 
• Fold the edges of the dough into the center around 2-3 times. Be gentle with the dough.
• Let the dough rest for 3 hours, Make a set of turns (going once around the dough, folding the edges in) every half an hour for the first 2 hours.
• Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface, shape it, and put it int a banneton. Put it into the refrigerator overnight.

Day 2:

• Bring the bread out. I found that my loaf needed about 2 hours out after 12 hours in the refrigerator.
• Preheat the oven to 500 degrees F.
• Put the bread in and lower the heat to 490 degrees F for 30 minutes
• Remove the steam and reduce the temperature to 460 degrees F for the final 13 minutes.
• Let cool for at least 1 hour before slicing.

Seriously, this bread is amazing.

Absolutely wonderful open crumb structure

I highly recommend it.

This is just a cool picture of the scoring on the bread.

Cool picture

All photos by Servia.