 I came across this recipe at an advanced Sourdough Workshop run by expert baker Lesley at Lesleys Kitchen Breadschool! This is one of my favourite sourdough recipes, for a few reasons! There is no lengthy stretching and folding involved, you can make the Pre ferment step in advance and you can do the final prove in the fridge for 24 to 48 hours, bringing a lot of flexibility to your sourdough baking, in addition to more digestible bread! I quite often prepare 2 lots of Pre ferment, leave one at room temperature overnight to use the next day and the other one stays in the fridge for up to 72 hours. This bread is delicious with a fairly close crumb, no big holes in this one but to be honest I’m not a fan of holey sourdough, all your filling falls through the holes! The oats add extra fibre, the pre ferment uses wholemeal flour and you can use a mix of flour to make up the loaf. Malted grain flour or half spelt, half white is a good combination for flavour and crumb texture. All you have to do is briefly knead the dough until it comes together then prove at room temperature for 2 hours, knock the air out of the dough, shape it and prove it in a banneton, either at room temperature or in the fridge. So this really is a simple but most delicious and nutritious sourdough! I hope you love it as much as I do! ✔️PRE FERMENT You can do this step overnight or 12 hours at room temperature or up to 72 hours, if you keep it in the fridge. Mix together with a wooden spoon and cover.
Making the loaf, add
✔️METHOD
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 Coffee kombucha has become very popular and its delicious! It tastes a bit like Tia Maria and looks all dark and brooding, like Guinness!
You can convert a normal kombucha scoby to coffee but then you can’t use it again for tea Since coffee is already acidic you don’t need any starter tea so you are good to go with just a scoby and some sweetened coffee. You can buy a scoby from Happy Kombucha.co.uk, request one from the Facebook group UK Fermenting Friends or ask a kombucha brewer for a spare. I have a scoby hotel and give lots of baby scobys away. A Scoby is a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeasts and keeps growing and multiplying, if you look after it properly, so you only need to acquire one once! YOU NEED
TO DO IT
As with everything else, the quality of the coffee beans massively affects the flavour of your kombucha. Coffee with sweet or chocolatey flavour notes gives the best flavour. Dear Green Coffee are an award-winning local company and sell fabulous coffee. I have used their Peruvian and Brazilian beans but the Peruvian beans are by far the most popular with everyone! It has notes of honey, toasted almond and toffee! SECOND FERMENT FOR ADDED FLAVOUR Since coffee is a strong flavour, you are a bit limited in what you can add to second ferment it! So far, I have tried cardamom pods, mulled spice syrup, vanilla and maple syrup. Think of all the flavours which the coffee shops sell and try a few different ones to find your favourite! Coffee Kombucha topped with coconut kefir and a sprinkle of cacao is utterly delicious!! Coffee kombucha is fabulous in a cocktail, like an Espresso Martini! My favourite is a blend of frozen cherries, coffee kombucha and martini. I call it In the Pink!  Basically, a sourdough starter is a mixture of flour and water, which is then left to ferment. Pretty much any flour will ferment if mixed with warm water and then left for a while, but your starter will become active much quicker if you use a wholemeal flour. The reason for this is because the outer bran of the grain contains far more yeast, which is essential to make your bread rise. Wholemeal (or dark) rye flour contains even more yeast and microbes, making it particularly good for a starter, the other advantages of making a rye starter is that its’s more robust, more versatile and more difficult to kill off!
·FLOUR The other important factor for your flour is that it is organic. Non organic flours are sprayed with fungicides and, according to statistics, residues are found in a large proportion of non-organic UK flours. Yeast is a type of fungus, therefore fungicides kill yeast, so do not use a non-organic flour! ·WATER The water you use to make your starter is also important. Tap water contains chlorine, which is antibacterial and can kill off the lactobacillus bacteria we are trying to nurture. So either use filtered water, a standard filter jug will do fine or leave the water you want to use in a jug for an hour or so and the chlorine will evaporate off. Your starter will cope ok with water straight from the tap once it has established itself but give it the best chance of getting going by avoiding tap water in the first few days of its life. ·HEAT Your starter will need warmth to get it going. If you don’t have a particularly warm house, or a nice warm place to stand it, sitting your starter on a hot water bottle or putting it in the oven with just the starter light on can provide enough heat for it 25 to 30 C is about right for a rye starter but don’t worry, if your house is colder it will simply take longer for your starter to establish itself. ·CONTAINER The last thing to mention is the container to store your starter. Use a glass jar or a plastic container with a loose fitting cover or use a cloth or tea towel to cover it. There will be some build up of gas pressure and the last thing you will want is an exploding starter! Never use a metal container as your starter will be acidic in nature and may react with the metal, causing it to corrode, which is never good. The quantities that I've given here are very small, but by doing it this way, you won’t have to throw any excess away but if you want to make a bigger amount, simply increase the amounts given to your chosen quantity. LET’S DO IT! Simply choose a suitable container for your starter, it will need to be big enough to hold 325g, then just follow the instructions below, remembering to put it somewhere warm and cover it loosely with a tea towel or a cloth. Day 1
Day 2 add
Day 3 add
Day 4 add
With all starters, getting the consistency of the mixture right is important.The starter should always be quite sloppy and almost pourable so that you can see evidence of the yeast working and also a more liquid environment allows for quicker biological reactions to take place. You'll notice that on the third day of your starter, the water/flour ratio decreases and you will have a thicker, less pourable consistency. By day 4, if you've followed the instructions accurately, you should have a starter that is ready to use for the first time to make a loaf. It should give off a fruity, slightly sour smell, will be bursting with yeasts and lactic acid and bubbling away. You can store your starter in the fridge until you need to use it. You then need to refresh it, ie, feed it to activate it. I take 25g of starter from the fridge and add 100g warm water and 100g flour, give it a good stir and put it somewhere warm for a few hours. Stirring it frequently introduces oxygen which encourages the yeasts in the flour and you should start to see some bubbles, showing your starter is active. To be honest I have found that the amounts of flour and water added to activate a starter straight from the fridge, don’t matter that much! It depends how much starter you need for your recipe. You should add equal amounts of flour and water You can add 50g flour and 50g warm water to 25g starter, which will give you 125g starter. My favourite recipes use 150g active starter and I like to have some leftover to make flatbreads, pancakes or pizza bases which is the reason I add 100g flour and 100g water. You can add any extra back to your starter in the fridge. Happy Baking! Janice XX |
Janice
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