Going to make some more pain rustique today with poolish made last night. After 14 hours, I put the poolish in the fridge as I had errands to run this morning. But as I learned last time, that radically reduces the temperature of the preferment so when added to the dough I’m getting a dough temperature of 60 degrees. I need 77.5 degrees.
So I attempted to raise the temperature by putting the bowl outside. After about 2 minutes, the dough temperature move from 60 to 77. I brought the bowl back inside, in fear that it would get too hot. As a result, the dough temperature lowered again back to 73.
The initial plan was to substitute garlic with shallots. I saw a bag of shallots next to bags of garlic last night at the grocery store and I thought it looked like a head of garlic but bigger and that perhaps it might be a fun alternative. Although, shallots are significantly more expensive than garlic.
As it turns out, shallots are more like onions than they are like garlic. As such, I wasn’t sure how to integrate it into the bread. Therefore I scrapped that idea, and went with a head of garlic. Before being peeled, an average head of garlic weighs around 40 grams. After peeling it, it weighs 30 grams. After the garlic is pressed, that is further reduced to 17.3 grams.
Today, rather than using chiltepin, I’m going to experiment with a much cheaper alternative: chile del arbol. Chiltepin has 50,000 to 100,000 Scoville units. Whereas Chile Del Arbol has 15,000 to 30,000 Scoville units. To compensate, I’m going to use twice as much Chile to see if that will put us in the same ballpark regarding heat.
After 40 minutes of autolyse, the dough is still too cold, dropping to 67. I out it back outside.
The surface temperature outside is over a hundred twenty degrees, so you wouldn’t think it needs to sit outside for very long.
My autolyse was an hour, before adding ingredients. 40 grams of chile might be far too much.
After the initial mix, the door was looking really good and the dough temperature is just about perfect.
Something came up unexpectedly between the final stretch and pull and final ferment, a delay of maybe 10 to 15 minutes. I’m hoping that does not create a problem.
In she goes.
50 minutes later:
This bread was barely edible it is so incredibly hot. My eyes were watering and my mouth scortched. This will probably appeal to a beer-drinking context with guys that like it really hot. The pepper itself has a smokey taste and it a nice distinctive to chiltepin. The bread turned a darker hue, somewhat reddish.
