Hazelnut and fig sourdough (adapted from Hamelman)

 

First bake after being away for weeks. If I were a better blogger I would show pictures of our trip, but since it was mostly to see family, I didn’t take many photos. Had a lot of awful bread during the three weeks and tested three banana cake recipes to use up all that banana lying around! And different varieties of bananas too. Over here, I can’t bring myself to buy those green plasticky looking things passing off as bananas…

Anyway, I wanted a straightforward bake after all this time away, although I did squirrel some leaven through customs to bake while on holiday. 

Hazelnut and fig sourdough (adapted from Hamelman)
145g          Stiff leaven
248g          T65 flour
113g          Whole-wheat flour
243g          Water
   7g           Salt
 60g           Hazelnuts
 60g           Figs, chopped

Original formula includes butter and a bit of yeast, so the rise is quite fast. I omitted both and went for a long first proof and overnight rise in the fridge. As I suspected, qty of nuts and figs can be upped. I now go by feel for these—if I’m not having trouble keeping the nuts and fruit bits within the dough while mixing by hand, there’s probably not enough :))