Sourdough breads with pigeon pea flour
Derek [1] and Gavin [2] have been baking very interesting breads with (sweet) lupin flour lately. The promise and attraction of these breads is, to put it in Derek's words, "..taste delicious not too overpowering very light in mouth and stomach afterwards..." and "completely devoured in no time!".
So, it was with these thoughts in mind that I made the impulse purchase of a bag of pigeon pea flour [3] and found myself making a sourdough bread with it when I got home from the shops. The bag itself recommended using the flour for baking biscuits and crepes or pancakes. And I found a paper [4] that said that "the bread from 10% pigeon pea flour blend with 2–3% vital gluten and 0.5% SSL had high loaf volume and loaf quality" so went for approximately that amount in the final dough:
When mixing the dough there was a clear pea (vegetable) smell to the dough. Dough was a nice pale yellow colour, which carried through to an attractive golden appearance in both the crust and crumb of the final loaves. When the bread was first cut, I noticed only the very smallest amount some of that 'off' pea smell taste (far less than when working the dough), but that taste note was lost the next day when the sourdough flavour of the bread developed. The starter used was about 2-3 hours past peak (and it did have a small refresher feed, but nevertheless, the sourdough tang was present in the taste).
I'm not completely convinced that pea flour brought all that much to these breads other than the lovely yellow colour, and possibly an improved protein composition. Nevertheless, I've got plans to use it again, perhaps at 5% in a loaf together with semolina to bring out a strong yellow colour.
- Method:
1 h 15m autolyse
Added levain using the dough hook for 1 minutes only (load shedding kicked in and had to stop there). Completed this with 50 slap and folds
30 minutes later added salt and bassinage of 52g of water that had been held back
15 minutes later an additional 10 slap and folds to bring the dough together after the bassinage
At 2 hours after adding levain, gave it a coil fold
At 3 hours after adding levain pre-shaped into rounds
20 minutes later final shape
30 minutes later into fridge
(next day, 9.5 hours later) remove from fridge while oven heats (for 45 minutes)
Into freezer for 15 minutes
Bake on baking steel together - 220°C for 20 minutes with steam, then 23 minutes without steam at 200°C.