Dry red bell peppers - that's my choice for today. The bread appeared to be so aromatic, so full of taste, with a very soft crumb due to a small adding of a good light olive oil to the dough. After a good mixing the dough was so silky and extensible, it was such a pleasure to work with it!
INGREDIENTS:
🔹200 g of bread flour (King Arthur bread organic)
🔹120 g Bob's Red mill bread flour
🔹30 g spelt flour
🔹80% hydration (280 g 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
🔹7 g of salt
🔹10 g of light olive oil
🔹 2-3 handfuls of red dry bell peppers
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 250-260g, the rest of the recipe water you'd better add to the dough at the very end of mixing.
*I made the dough for this bread a little bit more liquid, cause I knew that after adding dry bell peppers to the dough they would for sure soak in some water from the dough, so such 80% hydration was ok for my variant.
*It's also possible to soak dry peppers in advance, and then add them to the dough, in such a way you can make the dough less liquid and take less water for dough mixing, make it like 75% hydration.
⏰ then add starter and mix for 3 min in a stand mixer at a low speed - 10 min rest
⏰ then we add salt and mix the dough for 10 min more at 1-2 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. Then we add olive oil and mix 5 min more. Add the rest of the recipe water, mix 1 min more. Now the dough is ready.
*Put a small piece of the dough to a spy glass to monitor the growth.
*Please, do not add dry bell peppers to the dough during mixing step, the pieces of peppers have very sharp edges, they will for sure break your dough, it will be impossible to mix it properly. The only safe variant is to add them during lamination.
⏱ 7 hours of a total bulk fermentation at 25 °C (76 °F ): lamination 1h after mixing (sprinkled dry red bell peppers to the dough during this stage), then 4 coil folds every 40 minutes. The dough had the rise of 80% in a spy glass before shaping.
80% 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 a 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.