Barley, rye and spelt sourdough bread

Being that I liked so much the taste of barley in this bread, I wanted to try barley in a softer bread. Can you guess where I got this recipe from? Mmmm, (clock ticking...) you're right, from Dan Lepard's book again! That's what I call tiresome. (I think I've gone a bit too far with the picture size, have I not? I go blinder everyday.)


And without further delay, here's the recipe, adapted for spelt sourdough. The original recipe calls for white wheat sourdough:

Barley, rye and spelt sourdough bread

• 250 g spelt sourdough (100% hydration)
  
• 300 g water
• 175 g spelt flour (I used semi-whole)
• 225 g rye flour (I used white)
• 100 g barley flour (I used whole)
• 1 1/2 tsp good sea salt
  

You know you can find everything you wanted to know about sourdough but never dared to ask in The Fresh Loaf.

Well then... mix all the ingredients except the salt. I didn't allow for the 20 minutes autolysis because rumour has it that the benefits are only really noticeable in white breads (my source for this statement is the book by Nancy Silverton, Breads from the La Brea Bakery. She's very clever, so I believe her). As this is rather a sticky dough because of so much whole and rye flour, I used my mixer for kneading, to make things easier. I added the salt halfway and I kneaded for around 5 minutes. And then all the dough went to a well oiled bowl, I covered it with a plastic shower cap and left it to ferment.



I then went out for dinner (I know this is not related to the recipe, it's just for you to see that I have some social life, not only blogging life) around half past eight and when I came back home around twelve the dough had more than doubled and looked beauuutiful... so plump and round, like a little baby... sorry, I get carried away. I decided to form a small boule and a ficelle for a change. Then I put both in the fridge inside a plastic bag, the boule in my one and only banneton (for the time being).

The next day I took them out of the fridge around ten in the morning, while I started the oven, because it takes nearly an hour to get to 250 ºC. Around eleven I put the ficelle into the oven, which baked nicely on the garden tiles for 20 minutes, and then I baked the boule inside my red dutch oven. Half an hour was enough. I always follow Peter Reinhart's advice and I control that the final inner temperature of the loaf is 92-95 ºC with roast-beef thermometer (I looove kitchen gadgets).


Result: ex-cel-lent, the ficelle was so cute and the boule... oooohhh, it's the first time that I get a a boule that looks like the ones in the books, with the nice banneton marks and all. Besides, I love the baking in the dutch oven, it's more thrilling that the bread is concealed and then when the time comes to open the treasure chest... I love it. The scoring was not so good, because I did it when the boule was already in the pot (mistake) and manouvering around it was more difficult. The crumb was dense, but soft and moist. Perfect for nordic accompaniments like smoked salmon, caviar with hard boiled egg and that type of thing. I guess I'm going to have it for breakfast the whole week.