Naturally Leavened Khorasan Sandwich Bread Recipes

Steps:

• See the photo gallery and video below the recipe for target dough consistency and expansion.
• Starter Build, Mixing, and Bulk Fermentation
• The night before or early in the morning, build your 100g sourdough starter. For a night-before feed, use 10g sourdough starter with 45g water and 45g flour. For an early morning feed, use 30g starter with 35g water and 35g flour. Allow the starter to ripen until it is at least double in size.
• Mix the dough ingredients together in a large bowl and cover.
• After a 20-30 minute rest, stretch and fold the dough with damp fingertips (see video below). Cover, let the dough rest another 20-30 minutes, and repeat the stretching and folding. Cover and rest 20-30 minutes again, and then do a third round of stretching and folding.
• Let the dough bulk ferment until it has almost doubled in size. At warm temps (high 70s) my dough needed about 5 hours. Colder dough will need more time.
• Shaping and Final Proof
• Flour your work surface and scrape your dough out of the bowl. Pre-shape it into a ball, invert your bowl to cover it, and let it rest about 20 minutes. I decided to pre-shape this dough to strengthen the gluten a bit more.
• Shape the dough into a boule, batard, or oblong loaf to suit your proofing basket and baking vessel.
• Place the dough in your proofing basket seam-side up, cover, and let the dough rise again for about 30 minutes at room temperature and then refrigerate it overnight (8-16 hours). You can also leave the dough at room temperature for longer (1-2 hours) and bake it without the refrigeration stage.
• Baking
• Preheat your oven and baking vessel at 500F for 30 minutes.
• Flip the dough out of the proofing basket and onto a sheet of parchment paper or onto the base of your hot baking vessel. Score the dough, then cover and return the vessel to the oven.
• If your baking vessel is a ceramic cloche, bake at:
• 500°F for 20 minutes, lid on
• 450°F for 7 minutes, lid on
• 450°F for 10 minutes, lid off
• If your baking vessel is cast iron, lower the oven temperature 5 minutes earlier and at that time, also place a baking sheet under the cast iron on the same shelf.
• When baking is complete, the bread should have an internal temperature of at least 205F and it should sound hollow when you knock on the bottom of the loaf.

Steps:

• See the photo gallery and video below the recipe for target dough consistency and expansion.
• Starter Build
• The night before or early in the morning, build your 150g sourdough starter. For a night-before feed, use 20g sourdough starter with 65g water and 65g flour. For an early morning feed, use 50g starter with 50g water and 50g flour. Allow the starter to ripen until it is at least double in size.
• Mixing and Bulk Fermentation
• Scald the milk by warming it to 180°F. You may want to start with 400g milk because of evaporation.
• Add the honey, oil, and salt to the hot milk and let the mixture cool down to less than 115°F.
• Combine the flour, ripe sourdough starter, and liquid mixture in a large bowl. Mix thoroughly and cover.
• After a 20-30 minute rest, stretch and fold the dough with damp fingertips (see video below). Cover, let the dough rest another 20-30 minutes, and repeat the stretching and folding. Do the rest, and stretching and folding a third time.
• Let the dough bulk ferment until it has almost doubled in size. At warm ambient temps (high 70s) and the dough already warm from the milk, this took about 5 hours. Colder dough will need more time.
• Shaping and Final Proof
• Flour your work surface and scrape your dough out of the bowl.
• Shape the dough by stretching it into a rectangle, roll that up into a tube, flatten the tube a bit, and re-roll the dough into a tube again, making sure it is not quite as long as your pan.
• Place the dough in a lightly oiled loaf pan with the seam side down. I use a medium USA Pan, which is 9x5x2.75 inches.
• Cover and let the dough rise again for 1-3 hours at room temperature. My dough proofed for about 2 hours. The dough is ready to bake when it has doubled in size or its highest part crests over the lip of the pan. You can also refrigerate the dough overnight but first let it rise almost completely at room temperature, or plan for it to expand more the next morning at room temperature.
• Baking
• Put one of your oven racks on the second-from-the-bottom position and preheat your oven to 375F for about 15 minutes.
• Brush the top of the dough with milk and place it in the oven.
• Bake for 50-60 minutes, turning the pan halfway if the bread is browning unevenly. To firm up the bottom and sides of the loaf, take the bread out of the pan for the last 5-10 minutes of the bake.
• When baking is complete, the bread should have an internal temperature of about 200F.
• Brush the still-warm crust with butter or oil to keep it soft.
• Ideally, the bread should cool for about 2 hours before slicing.

Steps:

• Sweet Stiff Levain
• Mix the levain ingredients in a jar or straight-walled container with space for at least 300% growth.
• Press the starter down with your knuckles or a spatula to create a uniform surface and to push out air.
• Let the levain ripen and rise. At a temperature of 76-78°F, it typically takes up to 10-12 hours for this sweet stiff levain to peak. For my starter, I see 3-3.5 times increase in size at peak. The levain will smell sweet with only a mild tang.
• Tangzhong
• In a sauce pan set to medium heat, stir the milk and flour from the tangzhong ingredient list until blended. Cook for several minutes until it thickens, stirring regularly with a spoon or heat-resistant spatula. Let cool in the pan or, for faster results, in a new bowl. The tangzhong should reach 65°C (149°F) but I don't find I need to measure the temperature because I can see when it gelatinizes. You can prepare this the night before and refrigerate it. Ensure it's covered to prevent it from drying out.
• Final Dough Mixing and Bulk Fermentation
• In the bowl of a stand mixer, add the milk (consider holding back 10g of milk if this is the first time you're making this bread or if you skip the vital wheat gluten), egg, tangzhong, salt, sugar, diastatic malt powder and levain.
• Mix with a spatula for a few seconds and also break up the levain into many smaller pieces. Next add the flour and vital wheat gluten. I like to use my spatula to mix until there aren't any dry areas.
• Allow the flour to hydrate (fermentolyse) for 20-30 minutes.
• Mix on low speed and then medium speed until you see moderate gluten development, which may take 5-10 mins.
• Lower the mixer speed to avoid splashing, and then drizzle in the melted butter a little at a time, or alternatively add room temperature butter one pat at a time. The dough may come apart; be patient and continue to mix until it comes together before adding in more butter.
• Once all the butter has been incorporated, increase the mixer speed gradually to medium. Mix at medium until the gluten is well developed, approximately 10 mins. You can rest the dough intermittently during this time if your stand mixer heats up. You should be able to pull a windowpane but it won't be quite as thin as a white-flour windowpane because of the presence of bran in the whole wheat flour.
• This is a good time to add inclusions such as my favorite, black sesame seeds. At this point they don't interfere with the gluten development. If you add inclusions, mix until they are incorporated in the dough.
• On the counter, shape the dough into a tight ball. Place it in a bowl, cover and ferment for 2.5 to 3.5 hours at 82°F. There may be some rise visible at this stage, but don't expect the dough to inflate a lot or double in size.
• At the end of the bulk fermentation, you can immediately proceed to shaping or refrigerate the dough for about 1.5 hours to make it easier to shape. You can also retard the dough overnight, however, you may find that this increases the sourness of your bread. Keep in mind that the final proof will take longer if you chill your dough.
• Shaping and Final Proof
• Prepare your pan by greasing it or lining it with parchment paper.
• Lightly flour the top of the dough. Scrape the dough out onto a clean work surface and divide it into four pieces. I like to weigh them to have equal sized lobes.
• Shape the pieces into tight balls and allow them to rest for 5 minutes.
• Using a rolling pin, roll out each ball into a square and then letter fold it. Turn it 90 degrees and roll again to about 8" long. Letter fold again from the long sides so you have a long narrow dough. Then using a rolling pin, roll flatter, keeping the dough relatively narrow. Next roll up each long piece of dough into a tube with some tension.
• The extra letter fold makes the final rolls shorter and fatter so when they are placed in the pan, they don't touch the sides of the pan. This way the swirled ends can expand unimpeded during final proof and remain visible in the final baked bread. This shaping style is for an appearance preference and optional.
• Arrange the rolls of dough inside your lined pan, alternating the direction of the swirls. This placement allows for greater rise during proofing and baking.
• Cover and let the dough proof for 6-8 hours at a warm temperature. I proof at 82°F. You will need longer than 6-8 hours if you chilled your dough for shaping. I proof until the top of the dough comes to within 1 cm of the top edge of the pan.
• Baking
• Brush the dough with the egg-milk wash and begin preheating the oven to 350°F. Just prior to baking, brush with the egg-milk wash again.
• Bake the loaf for 50 minutes or until the internal temperature is at least 190°F, rotating as needed to get even browning. Shield your loaf if it gets brown too early in the baking process.
• After 50 minutes, lower the oven temperature to 325°F and remove the bread from the pan. Bake an additional 10 minutes with the loaf directly on the oven rack.
• When baking is complete, you can brush the top of the loaf with butter while the bread is still hot to keep the top crust soft.
• Let the bread cool about two hours before slicing. Store it wrapped in plastic or beeswax wrap. This bread can last over a week without staling.