We decided to make pancakes for Saturday morning so I bulked up my starter the night before. With such happy starter in the kitchen, I had to make bread with it, even though I still have half a loaf from last week’s late bake.
400g flour
300g water
100g starter (the usual 50/50 mix)
10g salt
60g rehydrated figs
60g chia seeds, soaked in 90g water
40g flaxseed meal, soaked in 80g water
With fresh starter, the proof started very nicely, but we went to a 3pm event at the library, so I had to put the dough into the fridge. Sunday was spent with one of our daughter’s friends, so I didn’t get around to baking till Sunday night. All this was a minor of a shame, since that dough was in a really, really good mood when it was first put in the fridge.
By the time I took out the dough, it was on the verge of being overproofed. It wasn’t so bad I had to attempt a rescue, but it was barely able to hold its shape. For the bake itself, I also tried the two tweaks I mentioned last week – I just baked at 450f the whole time, and I started with a cold lid. Given the state of the dough, I think the bread rose just fine so I plan on adopting these for the future.
As for the bread itself, it has the usual tight crumb, which I don’t love because big open airy crumb is in fashion but I’ve given up trying to change since it’s good at catching butter butter. The flavor is slightly sour, given the 30 extra hours in the fridge, but not as strong as last weeks loaf which spent a good 60 hours in the fridge.
In non-bread news, we also made pork wontons using the Kitchenaid pasta maker last night. The recipe came from the web with a 180 flour, 26 egg, 64 water ratio. Our egg was 45g so the ratio was upped accordingly and I accidentally added a 16g too much much water, so I had to add another 32g of flour. The wrappers came out fine. It seems the best process for making this dough is to let it rest (in a closed container to keep moisture) a lot along the way. In the future I’ll mix, rest, divide and flatten each ball at the 1 setting, and then thin it all the way down on an as needed basis.
For the filling, my wife used our brand new new Kitchenaid food grinder. The meat was a bit lean, but there were no glitches with the tool itself. I can’t complain, it was deeply satisfying to use these things we purchased to celebrate the new job and its pay raise. The bigger numbers on the biweekly check is nice, but it’s feels good to have some toys also.