675g Gilchester stoneground white flour
25g Matthews Cotswold Strong White Flour
531g water – 76%
14g salt
8g yeast
For today’s loaf, I wanted to try a single-flour recipe. I had a bag of Gilchester stoneground white flour, which had about 675g left, so I added 25g strong white bread flour to reach my usual 700g. I reduced the yeast to 8g because it’s still warm – my kitchen was 23ยบ when I started – and I wanted to let bulk fermentation take a bit more time than recently.
Stoneground white flour is less white than standard flour, so this is more like a semi-wholemeal loaf, and requires higher hydration that plain white flour. I had never made a loaf with just this flour, so I took a guess at 70%, based on previous recipes with this flour combined with others.
When mixing, the dough was quickly dense so I added another 21g water. The dough became dense again and I added another 20g. I underestimated this flour; it is much closer to a wholemeal flour, even though it is technically a white flour.
Baked as usual for 25 minutes with top of the cloche, and 20 minutes without.
When scoring the loaf, the top deflated a bit, which is sign of it being overproofed. Also, this loaf didn’t rise much in the oven. I need to learn more about how to judge the correct proofing time, both in bulk fermentation and in the pan. Some loaves have great oven spring and others don’t. I like to try different flours and combinations, and the kitchen temperature has varied a lot recently with the heat waves. Perhaps I need to spend some time doing the same recipe repeatedly to get proofing right. To do this, I’ll have to wait until the summer is over, so I can control the temperature in my kitchen.
The resulting loaf is quite good, though the crumb is a bit dense. Part of this could be my unfamiliarity with the Ankarsrum mixer; this is only my third loaf with this mixer.
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