I had some black sesame seeds that I had ground with some sugar 6:1 ratio a while back for a flavoured milk bread I had made. I felt like having a black sesame flavoured bread so decided to add the ground sesame seeds to my 100% whole wheat sourdough bread. The colour of the dough was fabulous a wonderful grey brown with some black spots from slightly larger bits of black sesame seeds. I unfortunately made a boo boo during the baked and baked at 500°F for 25 mins with steam forgetting to drop the oven temperature. This likely caused the crust to form a bit early and compromised what I think would have been even better oven spring. Despite that error I’m still quite pleased with this bake and the scent of the black sesame seeds when the bread was baking was awesome.
Overnight stiff levain pH at mix 5.35 fermented at 78°F for 11 hours pH 4.06 rise 3x at peak.
10 g starter + 25 g water + 42 g whole wheat flour
Using a #40 sieve sift all your stoneground whole wheat flour to remove the larger bits of bran. Weigh that bran and then add boiling filtered water twice the weight of the bran. Allow this to cool then refrigerate overnight.
Dough mix 280 g water + all levain + 9.31 g salt + 9.31 g VWG (already added to flour after sifted) + all sifted whole wheat flour
In the morning when your levain is ready, to your bowl add the water (not the hold back water), salt and all the levain. Using your silicone spatula dissolve the salt and break down your levain. Add the sifted whole wheat flour and VWG and mix until no dry flour remains. Allow to rest for 10-15 mins. Slap and fold to develop the gluten well. Once developed add the scalded cooled bran and the ground sesame seeds to the bowl. Stretch and fold to incorporate mostly and then slap and fold to ensure they are evenly incorporated. Do a bench letterfold of the dough and then transfer to a clean bowl and ferment at 82°F. The pH of the dough was 5.53 at this point.
At 30 mins interval do coil folds stopping when the dough no longer relaxes and holds its shape well. For me I only did three coil folds and then allowed the dough to complete bulk.
Once the dough has risen 40% (the pH was 4.66) the dough was shaped and placed in a banneton and allowed to warm final proof. Once the pH had fallen an additional 0.2 and the rise was 70% the dough was placed into the freezer for an hour. After an hour the dough was moved to the fridge. 20 mins later the oven was pre-heated to 500°F. 30 mins later boiling water was poured into the metal loaf pan with a rolled towel. When the oven reached 500°F after an hour of pre-heating the dough was removed from the banneton, scored, brushed with water and then transferred to the baking steel. 250 mL of boiling water was then poured into the cast iron skillet which was in the oven during the pre-heat. At this point the oven should have been dropped to 450°F and steam baking for 25 mins should have occurred but I accidentally left the temp at 500°F. Next the oven is vented of steam and the steam gear is removed. I would generally bake at 425°F for an addition 20-25 mins moving the bread off the baking steel and onto a rack and rotating as needed for even browning. But because I had baked too high a temperature in the first part of the bake I dropped the temperature to 400°F to complete the baking and only baked for 17 mins. Cool on a rack.
