A friend of ours had some flour from a mill here in New Mexico and wanted me to try baking some bread with it. The mill is Valencia Flour Mill and I used some of their unbleached flour in these loaves.

Schedule: I based this loaf off of my bakers yeast schedule.

Ingredients:

Dough

I made a double batch so I could have some extra bread in the freezer. You can divide everything in half if you’d only like to make one loaf.

• 700g bread flour
• 200g Valencia Flour Mill unbleached flour
• 50g rye flour
• 50g quick oats
• 780g filtered water @ 93’F
• 22g sea salt
• 4g yeast

Method:

I started with a 30 minute autolyse with all of the flours, oats and the water.

After the autolyse I mixed in the salt and yeast, performing 4 stretch and folds within the first 90 minutes, separated by 20 minutes. Bulk fermentation lasted around 4 hours.

I proofed for 60 minutes in bannetons before placing them in dutch ovens.

I baked the loaves in preheated dutch ovens at 450’F for 20 minutes covered, then removed the lid of each dutch oven and baked for an additional 32 minutes.

Result:

I made a test batch prior to these loaves using 100% Valencia Flour Mill unbleached flour and it was almost like eating a baguette but in boule form. The crust was extremely brittle and the crumb didn’t have very big air pockets. In this trial I wanted to add in some normal bread flour for a little added structure.

I think using 200g of the Valencia flour in a 1000g batch was the right amount. The crust still has a nice crunch but the crumb has a lot more structure. Both loaves rose extremely well in the oven, with a good amount of browning on the crust.

My Baking Notes

• Ambient Temperature: 68’F
• Started autolyse @ 6:00am
• Water temp: 93’F
• Dough was 90’F at autolyse
• Mixed @ 6:30am
• Dough was 84’F after mixing
• 4 stretch and folds over first 90 minutes
• Started proof @ 10:45am
• Into oven @ 11:45am