Sourdough bread made with T45

Maybe you think I am crazy to make bread with these hot weather… it is possible. But it is difficult to spend a lot of time without baking it when you enjoy it so much. But above all, without consuming it. I miss it! So last week I got back to bake bread and made this sourdough bread with T45.

I specify this variety of flour because, I think, not in all countries it is denominated in the same way. In Spain it can be found under the name of “puff pastry flour” but I have looked for information and I have not found a similar variety in other places. That is why in this post (in English) I have called it that way. T45 flour that is the one indicated to make laminated doughs. Next we will see the importance of specifying it.

I must admit that this bread was an experiment of several things; Some that I had in mind put into practice and others that emerged along the way. That is perfect because they are situations that can be given to everyone when we bake bread at home. I had been thinking about making bread with puff pastry flour (T45), I always thought the result had to be extraordinary for several reasons.

What benefits can provide a T45 flour?

• A flour that is specifically intended to make puff pastry or laminated doughs, must have a good P / L ratio (toughness and extensibility). This means that it is a flour with a great extensibility (capacity of the flour to be stretched) but does not lose its shape after the stretching thanks to its tenacity (ability of the flour to resist the stretching process and / or ability to resist deformation). This will favor a good crumb as the dough will contribute to the alveoli formation. It will stretch without resistance retaining gases and maintain its shape.
• It must have an optimal elasticity, this factor is also very important because it ensures that the flour returns to its initial state or restore shape. Otherwise we would get a dough like slime. We could stretch it to the point that it would lose its shape and be scattered across the table without any form. We are not interested either.
• This type of flour is usually a SuperHero: it supports huge amounts of sugar, fats and even a high hydration. Not forgetting the ability to work with it by subjecting it to long fermentations, since many enriched doughs are elaborated with long processes; Laminated and risen. This favors working with long fermentation times, using sourdough and giving a dough hydration to our choice.

As you can see all its characteristics offer good conditions for baking besides working with enriched doughs, so we have already taken the first step.

Kneading the bread without fear.

Another aspect that I had been wanting to try for a while was to make a bread with lost of kneading. I have always read, have been told me or heard (and I have told you!) that we should not exceed kneading time because we may damage the gluten mesh to the point of breaking it . Well, this is viable of course but very complicated to achieve.

For that reason I decided to make this bread with this flour (which is strong) and with much kneading. In fact to work this bread I used 2 methods of kneading:

• Kitchen Aid, during 15 minutes non-stop + the mixing time before autolysis (about 4 minutes)
• By hand, during 4-5 minutes (I like to finish all doughs by hand)

Of course we always have to make good use of our clinical eye. Observe and know the product with which we work because not all flours work the same way.

What was my result?

An incredibly smooth, developed, elastic dough with an extraordinary gluten mesh.

Here I should like to remind you that whenever you want to make membrane test, you must do it after a rest. Why? Because after kneading, the dough will be tight and this will favor resistance and crack. It will give us an incorrect result of the state of our dough.

With this step will solve many problems and doubts that you have consulted me (and sent by photos) in which the main problem was the lack of bread kneading. If we do not develop gluten properly, the dough can not retain gases correctly and, consequently, we will obtain a dense bread, with few alveoli, indefinite shape …

It is necessary to knead without fear, with delicacy, but without fear to break the structure of gluten. What you must do is add the salt as soon as possible to delay or reduce the dough oxidation.

The inconvenience that came along the way …

When you make bread at the same time that you make photos added to the emotion of seeing the structure of the crumb still unbaked … it is easy to forget things! Lately I try not to preheat the oven to very high temperatures, I try to reduce this more and more because I have the impression that sometimes it still dries on the top. This is a negative factor for the final bread expansion.

Well, at the moment of placing the bread in the oven (with the scoring made!) I realized that I had not removed the boiled water from the microwave, I did not have the oven gloves on hand, nor did I prepare several things … I got nervous, I did everything running and I left the oven door open. With the consequent lowering of temperature. Long live me!

At first I thought that it was a catastrophe, but at all, we can learn from everything. I was able to check firsthand that starting from 390ºF, the temperature that stayed inside, you can get a great bake. The bread expanded greatly and the color was an amazing gold. It is also true that the first point that I have discussed influences and much … but surely the reduction of heat from the oven also helped to improve the result. Undoubtedly.

Conclusion?

Never, ever, we should never stop trying new ways and methods to make bread. Even if they always work for us, maybe we’ll find a better one, or not. You have to try it.

And, of course, do not take things for granted (unless they are very obvious). We must always check first hand each process to know if they are correct or not. Thus we will know for sure if we should work with them or discard them.

NOTE: Maybe it’s good to take a look at this post if you’re starting to bake bread at home.