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Ingredients
- For the poolish
- 150 g course wholemeal flour
- 50 g wholemeal rye flour
- 30 g runny honey (blitz in microwave for 10-15 seconds if it’s hard)
- 300 g active kombucha tea (not too sour)
- For the dough
- 860 g strong white flour
- 440 g warm water
- 18 g fine sea salt
Preparation
Step 1
The night before you want to bake mix the ingredients for the poolish. Cover with a tea towel, muslin or a plastic bag and leave in a warm place. I put mine on a seed propagator that was on and maintains a temperature of about 22°C.
Here’s what I had the next morning.You can see it’s nicely bubbling, and some of the liquid has begun to separate from the flour. I tasted the poolish and it was a very palatable sweet, wholemeal porridge.
Mix the poolish with the rest of the dough ingredients in a big bowl until you have something like thisCover and leave in a warm place. Do four stretch and folds of the dough at about hourly intervals, as in the first video in my how to make sourdough post.
Then split the dough in two equal parts and shape the dough. Put into bannetons or on to floured greaseproof or Bake-o-Glide.
Allow to prove in a warm place for about 2 to 4 hours. This time really will depend on the temperature. What you want is for the gases produced by the fermenting yeasts to still have some power. When the loaf is first made, the dough is very resilient. If you press it with a finger it will push back and fill the dent. The longer you prove the less pronounced this effect is. Ideally, you will pop the loaf in the oven before the dough ceases to push back. It’s worth saying that with sourdough you will not get the dramatic ‘doubling in size’ you see in some other yeasted bread recipes. Look for a 25-50% increase
About 45-60 minutes before you bake, preheat your oven to highest setting. When you first start, judging this time won’t be easy so err on the side of being early and not late. Starting your loaf off in an oven that is not hot enough will not get you good results.
Then slash the dough in a way you find attractive and bake at 240°C for 15 minutes with a tray of boiling water in the oven (or your own steam generating method). Then remove the steam and bake for another 30-35 minutes at 190°C until you have the colour you like.
And there you have it, a very pretty and great tasting bread.
It means that I have more flexibility in how I bake. If I don’t have a very active flour & water sourdough leaven, I can still bake the next day if I choose. Obviously, if you’re not a regular kombucha brewer, you won’t have this to hand, but it’s worth thinking about.