Not quite sure what to call this but I took Mr P's idea of blitzing a whole orange and adding it into one of my ciabatta sourdoughs this weekend. I wanted to combine the orange zest taste with the nice sweet whole wheat taste you get from sprouted wheat. I have tried the sprouted wheat loaf before and liked it a lot but you need to spend a bit of time to get your wheat grains just right before grinding it up to add into the dough. Here is a link to the instructions.
I used 200g of 100% hydration starter with 260g of water and 200g of sprouted wheat ground up in a meat grinder.
Then in my blender I blitzed up the whole orange (160g) with some of the water and added in the ground sprouted wheat and a bit more water and blitzed the lot for a few seconds. I added this together with my starter, the rest of the water and 450g of flour.
The resulting dough was very sticky and wet but smelt fantastic. I did my usual long ferment with retarding in the fridge over 24hrs and then gentle stretching and folding over 4hrs before rough shaping and final prove for 1 1/2hrs. Back in the fridge overnight and bake in the morning.
Oh and for that added orange zing I used this amazing Australian 'Blood Orange' agrumato olive oil and worked a bit into the dough by putting generous glups on my hands and on the work bench whenever I handled, stretched and worked the dough.
The result:
I expected the crumb to be a bit more open considering how wet the dough was. However god knows what effect the orange juice and citrus rind has to the chemistry, not to mention the sugars released by the sprouted wheat. I've got no idea what was going on in there, but hey that's why we experiment with this stuff!..right?
Still I was happy that this bread was pretty open, light and soft and those orange bits worked a treat. I just tried some with avacardo, prawns and bacon. Yummy..yum..yum! It goes wonderfully well with seafood.
After that I just could not wait for breakfast to try it as toast so I toasted some to have with lime marmalade jam and coffee. I gotta say it was exceptional..thanks Mr P for the idea. Keep um coming.
Replies
Wow, what a fab idea to put the orange with the sprouted wheat. I never knew you were suppose to grind up the sprouted wheat grains either! I've always put them straight in after a 12 hour sprout, so they've only just started to sprout. Gotta try this one. Wish you could send me through a slice over the forum to try! Oh well, i'll just have to give it a shot myself.
Nice work tho!
into the sensational breads in the forum.....sigh.
YUM!!
I can't tell which bread I want to make next !!! Ya know they were talking about adding vitamin C to Sourdough a while back.... You should search it out Johnny! It is an interesting forum. So now I will need to get some starter going tonight, hummm what should I bake tomorrow? Well it will take a little bit to sprout some wheat, so I guess it will have to be the Earl & Apricot then!! Keep em coming Men! Terri,
we do this for our sourdough fruitbread at work, its really great to slow down fermentation time and let the dough absorb all the flavours, i think a good thing to point out is that the crumb isnt open because of all the acidity in the oranges despite it being ascorbic acid (vitamin c) which is a vital improver for bread doughs.
personally i like the flavour of zest. When i was running the production at il fornaio we used to get the breakfast chefs to make up big buckets of fresh o.j and put that into our organic doughs. we were using a levain (generally pretty airated) but when we started using the o.j it did decrease the size of the gluten structure dramaticly.
just like when the acidity in your sourdough culture becomes to high and breaks down the gluten! so i probably wouldnt add the orange to your starter, just the final dough. like adding a few drops of lemon juice to an over active levain will bring it back from the dead is another good example. I like the look of that loaf tho, makes me think of summer days or a picnic at the beach =)
Thanks Ben I will keep that in mind.. :)
The Italians use whole oranges in their panettone. Mr. P's idea is not as strange as it may sound. I have also used oranges in my sourdough baking (here and here) but yours would get far more concentrated orange fragrance. Bravo!
Oranges in Panettone hey? That's great. I never knew that. Those breads look amazing Shiao-ping. Especially the orange and avocado one. I want some for lunch! Nice work.
Interesting about the effect of orange on the proving Ben too. Thanks for the info.
P.S. Il Fornaio is one of my favourite places - I lived 4 doors up from there for a few years many years back. Such good pastrys and breads. Yum.
The orange infused avocado sourdough was a bit dense. Now I know why - it was the orange juice! Thank you, Ben, for the info.
Shiao-Ping
I have a bread machine and a Thermomix, I'd like to make sourdough bread in both of these. I'm cultivating a starter at the moment.
I get a bit lazy about kneading. The Thermomix does it for me :) I can allow it to proof in the TMX bowl and knead again. I should be able to use the starter and no yeast, hey?
A Breadmaker recipe would be ideal for me when times short, any ideas?
Delveen
I have never used a bread maker, so unless you can put it on an extended cycle, I would say you couldn't use starter alone and would have to supplement with some yeast. Sourdough needs a nice tea break between events, and a machine I don't believe allows for this.
K.