One day I was reading a lovely post from my friend Che Foodzheit and the post was about a yummy linseeds bread he baked for a Bread Baking Day. Now, since I am very distracted and time disoriented I first thought the bread was made with lentils (linser in Swedish), then after realizing it wasn’t I made yet another mistake, thinking the challenge (more proteins in your bread) was for February when it was instead a January theme…
Anyway, from two mistakes I made one good bread. With lentils, cause the idea of a lentil bread had already passed my mind a few times in the past and this linseeds bread reminded me that I still hadn’t tested a sourdough with lentils in it. So I boiled some red lentils with a little water and a lot of garlic (yeah!!) and added them to a well hydrated sourdough dough. To improve the color, which would have been not that appealing otherwise I added a couple of pinches of turmeic (curcuma longa) powder. Man, was this bread good! And it is packed with proteins and minerals as well, cause it has a 40% lentils in it (and how about all the vitamins in the garlic and the curcuma?). To be enjoyed feeling you are feeding yourself with a wholosome food. Which incidentally also looks darn cool.
Oh… one last note. This bread was leavened with a piece of old sourdough dough which staid in the back of my fridge for more than two months. After two feedings at room temperature the old dough was a lively starter, ready to be used. And as you can see it made excellent bread, not sour tasting at all.
RED LENTIL-TURMERIC SOURDOUGH
500 g mature white wheat 100% hydration sourdough starter
650 g water + 125 to add later
800 g stone-ground medium-strong wheat flour
200 g white spelt flour
3 1/2 teaspoon salt
400 g cooked red lentils (taken from 1 cup dry red lentils cooked in 2 cups water with 3 garlic cloves and 3 bay leaves)
1/2 teaspoon turmeric powder
1. Combine all ingredients except for the salt, the lentils and the turmeric
2. Knead for 8-10 minutes at low speed or with a slap and fold technique if you are working by hand
3. Let rest, covered, at room temperature for 1 hour
4. Incorporate the rest of the water, the lentils, the salt and the turmeric, and knead for another 8-10 minutes at medium speed or, again, with a slap and fold technique
5. Let rest, covered, for 2 hours, folding immediately and another time after the first hour
6. Transfer on a lightly floured surface and shape as you prefer, transfering the shaped loaves into floured rising baskets to proof
7. Let rest the shaped dough in the rising baskets for 2 to 3 more hours at room temperature, covered
8. One hour before baking, preheat oven to 250 C/475 F degrees, with the baking stone or baking dish in the middle rack
9. Bake with initial steam (you can throw a few ice cubes in the lower rack of the oven when putting the bread in to bake) at 250 C/475 F degrees for the first 15-20 minutes, depending on the size of your loaves, then lower the temperature to 210 C/410 F until the loaves look golden brown and they feel lighter when lifted
*when cooking the lentils, add more water only if necessary, they should become like a dry puree. once cooked, mash them with the garlic simply using a fork, and eliminate the bay leaves. make them cool off before using them in the dough.
