Sekowa Sourdough Secrets and Lush Bread Author Elena Zheleznyak,
🔗 🔗 To make Sekowa sourdough bread quickly and tasty, and dry granules are used very economically and efficiently, you can use a large production dough. Just put the dough on several loaves of bread on the ready-made Sekowa starter and use it gradually.
You can work with the Sekowa starter in different ways: you can take it directly from the can, like a regular homemade spontaneous fermentation starter that we developed earlier, or make a production dough. The first option is familiar and familiar, I baked whole-grain buns in this way, but, as it turned out in practice, it is much more convenient to put on the starter a production dough for three or four baked breads and use it for several days. The main thing is to let it rise to the maximum in warmth, and then, without crushing it, hide it in the refrigerator. This dough can be used directly in bread dough, which I decided to try in practice.
For production dough you will need: 350 gr. warm water with a temperature of 40 degrees;
80 gr. starter Sekov;
3 gr. dry granules Sekova;
250 gr. white wheat flour;
200 gr. homemade whole grain flour or grains.
The algorithm of actions is standard: we heat the water to 40 degrees and dissolve the cold sourdough in it, add dry granules, mix.
Add flour, knead wet dough
I put the dough in a transparent plastic container, it is convenient to look at the porosity in it and generally understand how much the dough has grown. Its capacity is almost 3 liters, it is convenient to hold the dough in it, and ferment the dough, there is definitely enough space and it is quite compact.
It was cool in the kitchen - about 23 degrees, and for the Sekove sourdough dough, according to the instructions, the fermentation temperature is critical (the dough, which ripens at 30 degrees in 3-4 hours at 25 degrees will be suitable for about a day), so it needs, to be as hot as in summer - 29-30 degrees. I tried to put the container with the dough in the oven with the light on, but after an hour and a half of the light on, it was even colder there than in the kitchen. Therefore, I wrapped the container with a towel and placed it next to the radiator, thereby obtaining the desired 30 degrees of heat.
From the photo you can understand that in five hours the dough has more than doubled and rose to a peak, and bubbles began to appear on top. But, nevertheless, when tapping on the container, the dough did not sag, this is good. Fallen, heavily sagging dough is considered overripe and noticeably worsens the quality of the bread, affects the porosity, taste, and aroma, therefore it is better not to allow the dough to overripe and use it when it is at its peak. This is how I put it in the refrigerator. Now you can take it out of the refrigerator, knead the dough on it at any time and bake it 3-4 hours later. And this "quick" bread will be a real sourdough bread with a deep aroma and characteristic wheat flavor.
The only "but" - this leaven should not be stored too long, so that its gluten does not break down. In Russia and Ukraine, flour from soft wheat varieties is mainly found, the gluten content of which is low by European standards - 10-11%. And, to be honest, we do not have such a variety of varieties of wheat flour, as, for example, in Germany. In our country, as a rule, the same familiar and familiar premium flour with a gluten content of 10.6% is used as “pastry flour for cakes and pastries”, “bread flour” and “general-purpose flour”.Of course, white wheat flour has a lot of indicators that affect its properties, but all of it, one way or another, loses them after spending three to five days in a mixture with water and yeast, in the form of a dough. I tried to use different wheat flour, mainly from local producers, put on it a production dough with sourdough and yeast, kept it in the refrigerator, and every time on the third or fifth day it irrevocably destroyed gluten and the dough began to tear strongly or turned into a sticky viscous mass, custard-like. Therefore, I mixed the current dough with the expectation of using it in two or three approaches.
The next day after kneading, I took it out of the refrigerator, it sagged a little and had a slightly sour smell, but the sour taste was almost not felt.
I decided to use a third of the available dough - 294 gr., In which 116 gr. Is water, 150 gr. - this is flour, 27 gr. Is a Sekowa starter and 1 gr. - dry granules. As you know, 30-80% of the flour in the recipe can be used in the dough, and the more it is in the dough, the more sour the bread will turn out. I wanted a soft creamy aroma and taste in the bread, so I added two more flour to the dough.
For the test I took:Dough on Sekov's leaven (294 g);
350 gr. flour;
184 gr. water;
7-9 gr. Sahara;
6 gr. salt;
15 gr. butter.
Remembering that Sekova behaves very passively even at 25 degrees, and at home I have 23-24 in general, I mixed all the ingredients, except for salt, butter and sugar, covered it with a film and left it for autolysis. Here is such a lump:
She covered the bowl with plastic wrap and left it on the table, honestly thinking that nothing would happen to the dough in a couple of hours. Therefore, when I approached to look, I was very surprised: it noticeably grew. I was so surprised (that's naive!) That I had no time for the camera, so take my word for it. I folded, kneaded and kneaded a smooth dough, adding butter, salt and sugar at the end. To be honest, before that I was sure that at such a seemingly unsuitable temperature, the dough would not work, that it needed 30 degrees of heat, period. After kneading the bread dough, which had already come up once on autolysis, I left it to ferment in the warmth, at the 30 degrees set for Sekova. For more than an hour, the dough has grown noticeably.
Quickly she molded a round bread and put it in a bowl lined with a linen towel, generously grated with flour, - to part.
At the same time, I turned on the oven (220 degrees) to heat up along with the baking sheet (I am still a guest and have not returned home to my wonderful gadgets such as a stone, a shovel and proofing baskets). By the way, if last time I baked in a good electric oven, this time I got an expensive, but rather average quality, gas oven, in which, as you know, the heating at the back wall is noticeably stronger, and the top of the bread usually remains pale.
In less than an hour at 30 degrees, the dough came up noticeably. I tried to press with my finger - it barely bounced, which means that it’s time to go. While I was looking for mittens, a suitable pan for the role of a cap, I cut off a piece of parchment, the dough became even softer and more fluffy, and it literally took 10 minutes.
I laid out the blank on parchment
Immediately I made an incision and sent it to the oven under the hood, the last one removed after 15 minutes. By the way, once again about the stone and whether it is needed or not. This time, we had to bake on a baking sheet under a large aluminum pan, with which the baking sheet only fit on the lower level. And, despite the fact that almost immediately, as I put the bread in the oven, I lowered the temperature to 200, and when I removed the cap, moved the baking sheet to the middle level, the bottom of the bread had time to charcoal, turning into a thin black inedible crust. At home with a stone, I often bake on the lower level and preheat the oven hotter, and I don't remember having my bread ever burned. And today it turned out so annoyingly.
The rest of the bread turned out to be wonderful: very soft, with medium-sized uniform crumb pores, with a wonderful aroma.
As a result, I would like to note that the use of production dough is much more economical and convenient than using a clean Sekowa starter.With a stock of mature dough in the refrigerator, the consumption of the starter and dry granules is reduced many times. In general, for dough, you can use a smaller amount of starter, it is quite acceptable for 500 grams. flour to take both 30 and 10-15 gr. starter, I just needed it faster, so I took 80 grams. Using less starter would allow the dough to ferment longer, but it would stay at its peak longer without the risk of suddenly falling off and overripe. In addition, note that when adding dry granules to the production dough, this no longer needs to be done when kneading the dough, when, as if the dough was put on sourdough, each time you would have to add 1-3 grams to the dough so that it ferments more intensively. The production dough can be of any moisture content, both thick and liquid, for simplicity and ease of use and further calculations, you can knead the dough with 100% moisture, that is, take an equal amount of flour and water. I am more used to doughs and sourdoughs with less moisture, so I will most likely go towards decreasing moisture. Well, and when you have a piece of mature, aromatic fermented dough at hand, bread turns out really quickly: in the morning you can take out the ready-made dough from the refrigerator, take as much as you need, knead the dough and bake wonderful bread in a couple of hours.
