Levain Rye Pear Spice Bread

Culinary Technique Tuesday / revisionist baking

Levain means sourdough
Links to gluten-free baking mix and firm levain are below. Any sourdough starter will work in the 1/2 cup portion, just mix starter with flour until the consistency of pie dough to make it firm. Wheat will work in this recipe.

Makes: 9-inch bread in a springform pan
or three small quick bread loaves,
or 1 large bread loaf
Days To Make: 2
Prep. Time: 15-20 minutes

Overnight Fermentation Ingredients
½ cup/50g gluten free oatmeal pulsed until fine in food processor
1 cup/150g gluten free flour mix
1 ½ cups/170g rye flour
2 tablespoons/12g ground flaxseed
½ cup/85g firm active levain
1 cup/100g toasted walnuts chopped
½ cup/45g dried pears cut with scissors
1 cup/100g/ one pear small dice
½ cup/113g unsalted butter small chunks
½ cups/175g raw honey
½ cup/125g pear sauce

Before Baking Ingredients
1 ½ teaspoons sea salt
2 teaspoons dijon mustard
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 tablespoon water

Ground Whole Spices
¼ teaspoon whole black pepper
1 teaspoon fresh ginger paste
¼ teaspoon whole allspice
¼ teaspoon whole cloves
½ teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon whole coriander

Overnight Fermentation Instructions
In the work bowl of a food processor
Add oatmeal and spin until fine
Add flours, ground flaxseeds
Crumble firm levain into work bowl
Pulse 6-8 times until combined
Add butter chunks and pulse several times, Add honey, pear sauce and pulse until combined
Add chopped walnuts, dried pears and pear Pulse briefly until combined
Empty contents of work bowl into a large mixing bowl. It should be a moist batter.
Cover the bowl with a clean cloth and
Ferment 16 hours at room temperature.
We turn our oven to warm, then turn it off, and ferment the batter in the oven, especially in the winter.
The batter should taste slightly sour and fermented, with small bubbles in the dough.
It won’t have risen much if at all, and that’s ok.

Before Baking & Baking Instructions
Preheat oven to 350F/ 160C
Cut a round piece of parchment to fit into springform, butter the tin and then dust with flour.
Grind spices together, sift and set aside,
Grind ginger paste and set aside.
Mix all of the before baking ingredients together into a slurry.
Mix the slurry completely into the batter until you can't see it, Important!
Spread batter evenly into a 9 inch buttered and floured springform
Bake for 35 minutes or more for large loaf and spring-form or 30 minutes for small loaves. knife should comes out clean from the center. Let cool before serving.
With Love Enjoy!
More rye and levain recipes under RECIPES

I’m tasting the pear spice bread as I write, my first reaction is that
I could eat this bread often; often and with pleasure; pleasure because I’m feeling the exciting pull of the spices, the background subtle sweetness of honey, the walnut crunch, but then
I wonder isn’t this suppose to be pear bread? Where’s the pear taste, and supposedly three kinds of pear; dried, fresh and sauce? So, I go back for another slice to find out where the pear went, and I find it, but it’s so allusive that it’s alluring; alluring in this age of wham-your-tastebuds. It turns out not elusive, absent, but the walls and windows of the bread/room, supportive and clear but not demanding. Isn’t that the way of pears in the Fall?
I can see this bread being served with cheeses who love fresh pears. It would be good with a hard pear cider, or a hot pot of black tea. I’m contemplating taking one of the small loaves and dehydrating it into pear rusks.

Q & A After the Pear Play

Q: So where did the sourdough taste go?
A: When you add baking soda, and or baking powder to a sourdough it will neutralize the sour taste because they're alkaline, which reacts with an acids of the sourdough neutralizing them.

Q: Why did you add the baking soda and powder?
A: Two reasons

To quickly insure that the bread would rise in the oven. Baking soda would work by itself because of the acid in sourdough, but there’s the extra insurance in baking powder....
While I like the taste of sourdough, it can confuse a sweet bread, so the soda neutralizes the acid but doesn’t get in the way of all of the other flavor-building properties of a long fermentation.

Q: Why bother with making this recipe sourdough, why not just make it as a straight quick bread? It seems like unnecessary trouble?
A: Several reasons

The microbial community helps to pre digest the starches and sugars in the dough, which in turn helps me to digest the bread, and with more available nutrition. This is especially important with rye baking. My personal experience is that I crash and feel disoriented after eating a slice of regular sweet bread, even my low sugar recipes, but I’ll have little to no adverse effects if it’s been fermented.
Because of the enzymatic dramas that take place during fermentation, the rise and fall of micro-empires, the flavors gained in a long slow fermentation are beyond compare. It’s worth the wait.
Rye and sourdough go together. It’s necessary to acidify rye flour because of its high level of enzymes. When unchecked they contribute to gumminess. The acidity in sourdough reduces the enzymatic activity, which promotes good crumb structure and superior flavor.

Q: Can I make this recipe 100% sourdough, without using chemical leavening?
A: Yes, and it’s challenging.
I’ve done it successfully and the flavors are incredible, but it’s a lot to ask of the yeasts to work through honey and butter. The bacteria don’t have any difficulty fermenting with fats present, which surprised me at first, but the yeasts get bogged down. If you are patient, use a vital starter for the initial fermentation, and have a warm proofing area for the final rising…. I’ve just become spoiled, and don’t want to bother with a long iffy proofing. My regular rye loaves proof in an hour...
2) I don’t see chemical leavening as cheating. I care about the fermentation process and benefits, and not so much about what lifts it in the oven. I’m not a purist. I do like the flavors in the sourdough, and for regular bread will always head in that direction. I also know that the sour taste is important signal to the body. But, if I need to use chemical leavening after the initial fermentation to easily and reliably make cakes, sweet breads, cookies then I’m ok with that.