Inclusions, sourness and larger loaves

meremark

Hello,

I've just started down the sourdough road and have been having some success following the Sourdom beginner's starter and the Pane Francese recipes (no yeast version).

 

I'm keen to start adding things to my bread, for instance pitted kalamata olives and fresh rosemary, and am wondering where in the process these should be added?

 

My bread has had a nice texture but is not particularly sour. Will this improve with time as my starter ages? Or are there other things I could do to get a more sour flavour?

 

Finally, I was looking at the cane bannetons for sale on this site but realised they are for considerably large loaves than the pane francese recipe makes. How do I go about increasing the amount of dough. Just increase everything in the same ratios?

 

Cheers

MM

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farinam's picture
farinam 2015 November 29

Hello meremark,

Generally you would add things like that towards the end of the dough development phase with just enough kneading/mixing to distribute them through the dough without making a mush of the soft things like olives or dried fruit and so forth.  Also this reduces the effect of such ingredients on the development of the gluten structure in the dough.

Bread made with sourdough does not 'have' to be sour but if you do want to have a bit more 'taste' then the options are to use a greater proportion of sourdough in the recipe and to give more time for the dough to mature so that the acid generating bacteria have a chance to do their work.  Operating at lower temperature (retarding) is the way to go for the latter.

The Pane francesa recipe makes a kilogram of dough and that is a perfect size for the 1kg banneton and that is certainly what I use for that recipe.  However if you did want to make a larger quantity of dough for any reason then simple pro rata is the way to go.

Good luck with your projects.

Farinam

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