Sourdough Bread with Dried Apple

Sourdough Bread with Dried Apple

I'm sorry to say I didn't measure anything with this bread.  I was just tossing stuff together with some discards, after refreshing the sourdough.  Approximately:

• 400g mixture of two sourdough discards at approximately 100% hydration each:
• whole wheat, and 
• tartine (i.e. 50:50 ww/ap flours)
• 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
• 1/2 cup of diced home-dried sour apples
• too much salt, a moderate handful, probably as much as 4%?
• water to get a kneadable dough ?1 cup

It was too hot to cook in the kitchen, but I didn't let that stop me from baking bread: I was going to fire up the barbecue anyway, to cure a cast iron pot with some oil.  There was room for some firebrick on the grill, and I could bake one small loaf.

Before heading off to the beach, I mixed up the dough from the discards, and left it to sit all day in the kitchen.  It was out about 12 hours, total.  When I got home, it had not risen so much, but there were definite signs of fermentation, there were tiny holes in the top here and there.

I baked it without any further ado.  No punching down, no more kneading, just plop out of the bowl onto the hot firebricks.  The barbecue took the temperature up to 700 degrees to cure the pot for about an hour, but I backed off to 400 degrees once the bread went on.  It sat there for about 20 minutes, then I turned it over for another 15 minutes on the cooling barbecue. The loaf didn't really retain its form, but then, it was never properly formed anyway.

Results

This is mouth-watering sour bread.  I really like it, for the change it brings to bread.  The dried sour apple is an extremely concentrated taste, and with the old sourdough, full as it is of lactobacilli, the final dough has a tanginess like a sourball.  And the large amount of salt in the bread really brings the sourness to the fore, too.  A very unusual texture, almost like a biscuit.  I ate it alone when warm, buttered when warm, and with some old cheddar.  I also tried some later with some home-made dandelion jelly.  It was all good.  Unexpectedly good. 

And there was just enough of it.  Much more, and it wouldn't have been special.

Tiny loaf.  You don't need much for a whole lot of taste.

Just a rough, rustic, biscuit-like crumb

This is what the dried green apple pieces are like, before I diced them up for the bread.

lots of butter, and a blob of dandelion jelly

Notes to Myself

• Measure your ingredients. If you don't, how are you going to reproduce results?
• Dried sour apple really concentrates the sourness and complements the sourball-like flavours of this old dough. The extra salt changes the textures, inhibits the yeast, and lets the lactobacilli have at the dough, increasing the sourness. Zing: it's tangy.
• What if you added dried lemons? Pucker up, baby.