Swiss Farmhouse Bread by Jeffrey Hamelman
Overall Formula:
- Bread Flour 360g (90%)
- Whole-Wheat Flour 40g (10%)
- Raisin Juice 42g (10.5%)
- Water 238g (59.5%)
- Salt 8g (2%)
- Walnuts 88g (22%)
- Raisins 60g (15%)
First Build:
- Bread Flour 67g
- Raisin Liquid 42g
Second Build:
- Bread Flour 84g
- Whole-Wheat Flour 40g
- Water 78g
- First Build 109g
Final Dough:
- Bread Flour 209g
- Water 160g
- Salt 8g
- Walnuts 88g
- Raisins 60g
- Second Build 311g
- Prepare Raisin Yeast Water — 5 to 6 days before the bake, soak the raisins (organic raisins are recommended) in water. Cover and leave at warm room temperature (75-80F). White mould normally begins to cover the surface of the raisins, an indication that the liquid is ready. Once the ferment starts to actively bubble, it should be ready.
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Build #1 — Discard the spent raisins and measure the required amount of juice, add flour and mix to incorporate. Lightly cover and leave at room temperature for 6-8 hours, until well risen. NOTE – you can keep the remaining YW to refeed and perpetuate. Give the YW another handful of raisins for food and refrigerate.
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Build #2 — Add water for second build to the first, then mix to incorporate. Incorporate the bread flour and the whole wheat flour into the mix. Lightly cover and leave to ripen for 12-14 hours until fully doomed. Note – if the room is too warn and/or humid you may retard the preferment a couple of hours or so to slow things done. The important thing to achieve is a fully risen and doomed preferment.
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Mixing— Add all ingredients to the mixing bowl, except the walnuts and raisins. Mix until the gluten has attained moderate development. After mix in the nuts and raisins at slow speed until evenly incorporated. Desired dough temperature (DDT): 76F.
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Bulk Ferment — Ferment at room temperature (~76-78F) for 2 ½ to 3 hours.
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Folding — Fold the dough halfway through the bulk fermentation.
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Dividing & Shaping — Divide, pre-shape, and shape the dough. Cover the dough to prevent drying.
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Final Fermentation — Ferment 1 ½ - 2 hours @ 76F.
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Baking — Slash dough and load into a preheated and steamed oven set to 450F. After 15 minutes lower oven to 430F to avoid excess darkening due to the raisins. Loaves scaled to 1 ½ pound will bake in approximately 36 minutes.
NOTES: I scaled down to 400g total flour but i’ve given you all the ingredients percentages. For this bake I used whole spelt flour and toasted the walnuts which worked very well indeed. This is a delicious recipe which is firmly part of my baking repertoire.