- 700g Matthews Cotswold Eight Grain Flour
- 25g Matthews Cotswold Stong White Flour
- 476g water – 66% hydration
- 12g salt
- 10g yeast
With my new Ankarsrum mixer, I want to try single flour loaves for a while to best grasp the way the mixer works. (To be fair, this flour is a combination of several flours, flakes, and seeds, but I want to use just one flour bag to become familiar with the way the Ank mixes, rather than combine different flours as I usually do.) The first loaf I made with the Ankarsrum was with this same flour, though I used a bit less because I was worried about it rising too much. This time I raised the amount of flour to my usual 700g.
I started with 68% hydration, but, as I was mixing, it was obvious that the dough was a bit too slack, so I added 25g of strong white bread flour, making it about 66% hydration.
The miller has a recipe for rolls, which is 56% hydration, but I think that would be too dense for loaves. My dough was still fairly slack when I put it in my tub for bulk fermentation, but no more than other high-hydration breads I’ve made.
Bulk fermentation took about 45 minutes in my kitchen at 24ยบ. The bread passed the poke test, the jiggle test, and the doubled volume test. I put it in my pan and let it rise for another 40 minutes before baking as usual: 25 minutes with the cloche on, and 20 minutes off.
The loaf turned out very wel. Nice and chewy, with that semi-wholemeal taste. Like the previous loaf, it didn’t rise a lot, and the crumb is tight but just right for toast. I think next time, I’ll add some white flour to make this a bit lighter.
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