Making the Sponge:
Mix together 2 cups starter, 1 cup water, and 1 cup flour. Cover with clean dry towel and let sit overnight. The next day, thinly slice 1 1/2 cup red onion and soften, with oil, in a skillet. Dry toast 1 tablespoon caraway seeds. Add the room temperature onions, caraway, 3 cups flour, 2 tablespoons oil, 4 teaspoons sugar and 1 teaspoon salt to the overnight sponge. Add 2-3 cups more flour to make a firm, smooth dough. Knead. Rise 3 hours. Shape. Rise 1 hour. Bake at 350 for 1 hr.
Prep notes:
I've yet to do the ice/preheated pan to achieve a really crusty crust. I'm just paranoid - I think that the glass on the oven door will explode with the heat change or that somehow I'll light the apartment on fire. I really should get over this....
Tasting notes:
The final dough is quite soft. The baked loaf smells really good when baking and the end result is a nice, soft crumb. The bread smells of onion, but the end result is not very strong. I think that increasing the spices or crushing them before baking may lead to a nice end result.
If you are enjoying my bread recipes stay tuned for Vegan Month of Food (Vegan MoFo). The site has not uploaded the new information for this year but I will be blogging about bread everyday in the month of October! Stay tuned!
I am submitting this post to Bread Baking Day and Yeastspotting.
I started out with your recipe a few days ago, building my starter over a few days to get it nice and bubbly. I changed the process a bit, allowing for an autolyse after mixing the flours (I through in some rye) and water, kneading quite a bit before adding the salt/onion/caraway, and threw in a few folds during the first proofing. That seemed to work fine. The problem was my dough was too wet.
ReplyDeleteThis was potentially my fault because I noticed your recipe doesn't call for more water when mixing the main dough. That must be a typo, no? Otherwise this is a super stiff dough. I added too much, I realized this after kneading 20 minutes. No real going back at that point.
However, the bread turned out with nice flavor (I like the toasting of the caraway) and was really good warm with some blackberry jam.
Lauren -
ReplyDeleteI'm glad that you made and enjoyed this bread. I think I should get some blackberry jam - as that pairing sounds amazing!
I didn't add more water to the dough. This is probably because I keep my starter very liquid. That fact, combined with the autolyse you used could cause the difference in liquid.
I almost never add more water/liquid after the sponge is made.
Thanks for the comment! :)
Oh yes, the blackberry jam was a perfect accompaniment!
ReplyDeleteI'm new to bread baking (and thus really should not be straying so far from recipes!), so I'm curious about your starter. I have a 100% hydration starter and have always added water to it when mixing in more flour to make a dough. Is your starter a higher hydration? Do you usually bake fairly stiff dough?
Happy Holidays! I am not sure of my exact hydration - as I feed by eyeballing it. I like it runny, like really thin pancake batter. I make an overnight sponge - equal starter, water, and flour. And almost never have to add more liqid to the dough - maybe some oil, or honey for flavor. :)
ReplyDeleteDon't toast the caraway and/or bloom the spice in the oil that is being added to the recipe...just a suggestion to your pondering...something I might try :)
ReplyDelete