Blue Corn + Whole Wheat Sourdough

When I was pulling some ingredients out for my normal sourdough, I saw a package of blue cornmeal staring me in the face. I decided to change up my standard sourdough with whole wheat and throw some blue cornmeal in there too.

Schedule

Using the lazy sourdough method is actually quite simple. The real key to this method is that you can use your unfed starter straight from the fridge without the need to make a levain. There’s also no autolyse which saves about 30 minutes.

Schedule: Here’s a link to the lazy sourdough method.

The exact schedule I used is at the bottom of this post.

Ingredients:

This recipe makes two loaves. Simply divide all the ingredients by two if you only want one loaf.

Dough

900g bread flour
80g whole wheat flour
20g blue cornmeal
750g filtered water @ 88’F
200g unfed starter straight from fridge (100% hydration)
22g sea salt

Method:

After mixing the dough, I performed 4 stretch and folds within the first 2 hours. I let the dough bulk ferment at room temperature for a total of 8 hours. If your kitchen is on the cooler side, a full 8 hour bulk fermentation might be necessary. We’re easing into Spring here in Santa Fe, but my kitchen was still hovering around 70’F.

Once the dough had doubled, I divided and shaped the loaves and put them in bannetons that I liberally dusted with rice flour. For one banneton I added sesame and poppy seeds while the other got flaked oats. I put the bannetons in vegetable bags and then placed them in the fridge for a 17 hour cold proof.

One hour before baking I started preheating the oven, with dutch ovens inside, to 450’F. When it was time to bake, I took the loaves straight from the fridge and placed them in the preheated dutch ovens, gave them a quick score and then put them in the oven.

I baked the loaf at 450’F for 20 minutes covered, then removed the lid of the dutch ovens and baked for an additional 30 minutes.

Result:

If you haven’t used blue cornmeal before, it can be used almost interchangeably with normal yellow cornmeal. The difference is the blue corn gives a nutty flavor and an obvious blue / purple hue to the bread. The blue cornmeal I use is a lot rougher of a grind, with some big and some small pieces.

I used a smaller amount of blue corn in this recipe than I normally do, but you still get a nice speckled purple throughout the crumb. The cornmeal also adds a nice crunch when eating the bread. The whole wheat is also a nice balance to the blue corn and bread flour.

This bread is perfect for sandwiches, french toast, garlic bread or just about anything else you need bread for.