The Fresh Loaf

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Fermented Chickpea Sourdough

Hotbake's picture
Hotbake

Fermented Chickpea Sourdough

New experiment. Soaked chickpea coarsely blitzed in a food processor, fermented with some starter for 20 hours before making the dough. 

 

 

Comments

ifs201's picture
ifs201

How does it taste?!?

Hotbake's picture
Hotbake

Super nutty delicious. The fermentation definitely sweetened up the chickpeas, my worse fear was that the chickpea turned funky, but that didn't happen:) It smells like a starter that's been refreshed the next day.

I liked it more than any bread with cracked grains! 

bread1965's picture
bread1965

Ok. That's a stunning loaf of bread! I love chickpeas and was funny enough thinking about making bread with lentils or chickpeas. Can you share your process and recipe?  This definable looks like something I'd like to try! Well done. How pronounced is the chickpea flavour? And how about toasting up some of that with salted butter?! I bet that would be remarkable!

 

Hotbake's picture
Hotbake

The chickpea flavor was very very pronounced, and surprisingly not sour, more on the sweet side with a little bite on it.The best part was the crust, with bits if toasty crunchy chickpea on the outside. Lentils sounds like a great idea, I'll definitely test it out!

RECIPE

Night before:
170g dried chickpea, soak in water overnight

Next day:
Grind chickpea coarsely in a food processor, I kept mine a tiny bit chunkier than I'd like for my falafels:)
Add:
25g starter
260g water ***( including the weight of the amount of water you soaked the chickpea with)
Total weight: 170+25+260=455g
Give that a good stir, pat it down flat and leave to ferment for 24hrs. Or even longer!

3rd Day:
Add:
260g water
35g Starter
340g bread flour
50g whole spelt
25g dark rye
Leave to Autolyse 1hr

After 1 hour,
add :13g salt
1.5 Tbsp Za'atar (optional)
1 head of roasted garlic(optional)

1.Hand mix throughly, you might need more water if it feels too stiff, this dough takes on a lot of water!
The dough will hold its shape, but the flour mixture will look like glue, the only thing that holds it's shape is the chickpea!
It tears right away when you stretch it, no extensibility at all.

2. So from there you need to do at least 10 min vigorous slap and fold. After that the dough should be stretchable:)

3. Put it back in the bowl, with a wet hand, round the dough up into a smooth ball> rest 1 hour in room temp

4.Perform 1 set of coil fold>rest another hour

5.Perform a 2nd set of coil fold> leave to bulk ferment for another 2-2.5 hrs, dough is ready when slightly puffy and grew volume, about 50%.

6. Loosen up the edges of the dough, flip the bowl over onto a floured surface, shape directly and place in a banneton, retard in fridge for 12 hours.

Bake day:
500f covered for 20 min
450f uncovered 30min

bread1965's picture
bread1965

Thanks so much for posting the recipe! I'm definitely going to make it and will post a picture when I do. Not sure when though..

Question: This part isn't clear to me so I better check:

You said: 260g water ***( including the weight of the amount of water you soaked the chickpea with)

So if I put 170g of dried chickpeas in a bowl of water, the only way I'll know how much they absorbed is to weight them when hydrated the next day and the difference (hydrated vs dry) will be the amount of water absorbed.

So I'd then subtract that amount from the 260 grams added the next day?

Thanks - Love this bread.

If you make one with lentils please message me the link to that post so I don't miss it!

Bake happy - frank!

Hotbake's picture
Hotbake

Bingo! I know I made it sound so confusing so put the total weight there.

The final weight of the mixture including the water, chickpea, and starter, should be 455g

I hope you give it a try:D Will definitely keep you posted on the lentil experiment!

Isand66's picture
Isand66

great idea.  Looks like you nailed it too.  How was the chickpea flavor?

Hotbake's picture
Hotbake

I used a lot and it was quite pronounced. I've used cooked and mashed chickpea in my bread before and this is definitely completely different. This is more like bread with fermented crack wheat, sweet and nutty:)

Elsie_iu's picture
Elsie_iu

That's a beautiful loaf! I'm sure just a slice of this would make quite a filling snack :)

Hotbake's picture
Hotbake

My husband absolutely LOVED it and I think I've eaten 1.5 slices out of the whole loaf before he devoured the whole thing?

bread1965's picture
bread1965

Hotbake.. great recipe. I'll dial it in when I can get the right flours .. Thank you for sharing!

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/63561/fermented-chickpea-bread

 

Benito's picture
Benito

That is quite original, I haven't seen this anywhere before.  Great bake!!

Benny

Detailaddict's picture
Detailaddict

Interesting...I recently tried adding chickpea flour to a basic loaf recipe, for the molybdenum as legumes are apparently the best source.  I tried using kamut flour for the higher protein/gluten content = better rise presumably, to make up for the lack thereof in the chickpea flour; but the loaf still didn't rise very well and baked up on the dense side.  The flavor is just decent, mainly because it's more sour than I would like (which is more a product of my starter) but it's at least sliceable and not crumbly as I feared it might be.  The idea here to simply cook up (and peel) some chickpeas and throw them in might be a viable alternative, although I might not get the same Mo content with whole chickpeas as opposed to flour.

Isand66's picture
Isand66

Good idea to use a higher gluten flour.  Kamut in my experience is not high enough to use with something with no gluten like chickpeas.  You would be better off using a strong bread flour and mix in a smaller amount of Kamut if you like the flavor.

ReneR's picture
ReneR

While researching a Greek sweet Easter bread I came across a bread they make in Crete with a sourdough starter they make with chickpeas. So, instead of getting a fermentation going from the naturally occurring yeasts in the wheat/flour, they do the same with chickpeas/chickpea flour (both seem to have come up). Once they fermentation starts they then I think they convert it into a wheat or grain starter by feeding it with the particular flour they will maintain it with.

I am very tempted to try getting a starter like that going when I have a little more spare time, but I really like this idea of using some soaked ground up chickpeas with my existing SD starter too.