Cocoa swirl sourdough🌾 My kids were asking me for a long time to bake it, and they were so happy with the result, cause colored swirl breads are such a fun for kids, especially with cocoa🥰 The aroma of chocolate was gorgeous👌❤️ The crumb is like a cloud, I changed my first version of this recipe, made it more enriched to make the taste more balanced.
INGREDIENTS:
🔹 350 g Bob's Red mill bread flour
🔹 78% hydration (273g of water: you should decide by your flour how much water to add, the consistency is not too liquid)
🔹 70 g of an active sourdough starter (it should have 2-5 times growth)
🔹 7 g of salt
🔹 10 g of sugar
🔹 1 full table spoon of a good alkalized cocoa powder, for more intense taste and color try 1and a half table spoon
DOUGH HANDLING:
⏰ 1 h of autolyse in the fridge (just water + flour), make sure that you take not all recipe water at this step, add 265g at first, the rest of the recipe water is better to add to the dough at the very end of mixing.
⏰ then add starter and mix the dough for 3 min in a stand mixer at a low speed - 10 min rest
⏰ add salt, sugar and mix the dough for 10 min more at the 2nd speed in a stand mixer until the dough is smooth and strong. If you knead it by hands, the total time of kneading is 20 min. Add some additional cold water if needed, the consistency is not too liquid.
⏰ take 1/3 of the dough and keep on mixing it with cocoa powder for 2-4 min more. The consistency of the dough will become more stiff due to the added powder, so add some extra cold water if necessary.
*Make sure that you use some good alkalized cocoa powder, cause if it's not alkalized, it will not give the dough a good chocolate color.
*Put a small piece of the dough to a spy glass to monitor the growth.
⏱ 9 hours of a total bulk fermentation at 25 °C (76 °F ): 2 coil folds of the each dough separately every 40 minutes. Then I combined both doughs together, you can see it in this video. Did one more coil fold, left it to proof untouched to make color layers more distinguish in the final bread.
The dough had the rise of 90% in a spy glass before shaping.
*90% growth is ok for my flour and hydration, cause the flour was quite strong and the gluten was nicely developed. If your flour is weaker or the dough is more liquid, you can start shaping it at a 60-70% growth rate.
No preshape, shaped gently as a batard, a short warm retard in the proofing basket (the dough is covered with plastic wrap) for 10 min on the counter.
❄️ + 12 hours of a cold retard in the fridge at 3-4°C (38 F°).
Baked in the dutch oven (10 min with closed lid 450° F (230° С), 15 min - the lid is still closed 420° F (215° С), 15 min without the lid 390° F (200° С).
And here it is, full of tastes and aromas! I hope you will enjoy it!
All tools I use for baking you can find here.