Motherdough 70

No, not 70 years old! 70% hydration! I baked up some motherdough bread today. Bread made with motherdough is out of this world delicious. The flavor of the wheat is brought out to it’s fullest. The smell is heavenly. The crumb is soft and somewhat custardy moist and tender. This is really good bread.

For this motherdough preferment make up some dough at 70% hydration and refrigerate it for 3 to 4 days. This particular motherdough has a small amount of salt in it to help maintain the gluten’s integrity.

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The Motherdough @ 70%

This will make 2 lbs of motherdough, you will only be using 1 lb, the rest can be used for pizza dough or another recipe.

• 3.1 oz/ 87g -vigorous sourdough starter at 100% hydration
• 12 oz/340g – water
• .1 oz/2.8g salt
• 17.8oz/504g bread flour (I substituted 2 oz of whole wheat flour for part of the flour)

Start by tearing the motherdough into chunks and placing into your mixing bowl or dough trough. Then add the warm water, the oil, malt and salt. Stir all ingredients together. Then add the flour and mix until the dough comes together. No need to autolyse when you are using motherdough. This will make approximately 4 lb 5 oz/1967g at 64% hydration.

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Allow the dough to ferment for three hours, folding the dough once each hour. Then refrigerate the dough for up to six hours. In the late afternoon take out the dough and let it set for two hours at room temperature. Then divide (I made three loaves weighing around 1 lb 6 oz) and shape the dough and place the dough into the bannetons or baskets, covered with a plastic bag. Next, place it back into the refrigerator overnight. In the morning, stagger taking out the loaves about every half hour or so.

I placed the loaves still in their baskets  into a warming oven to warm up and proof. A microwave is a good place to warm up your dough, so is your dishwasher.  To warm up your microwave, heat a cup of water in the microwave and then place your dough into the microwave, allowing the cup of hot water to keep the microwave warm and moist. You can also use the heating cycle on your dishwasher.

Once your loaves are ready (mine took three hours to proof), slash and bake at 450F degrees in a preheated oven with a baking stone.  For the first 20 minutes of the bake, I cover the dough with a roasting lid after I  have sprayed the dough liberally with water.  Once the 20 minutes are up, take off the lid and allow the bread to brown. This takes another 10 – 15 minutes.  Remove the loaf once it’s done and place the roasting pan back in to preheat for the next loaf. Cool, eat, enjoy!!!

My boss got a loaf … good to butter up the boss….  🙂

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