Buckwheat Couronne Bread

One of my favorite books about bread is Living Bread by Daniel Leader.

When I am looking for an inspiration this book always has something to offer.

Today I want to share with you a recipe of a delicious buckwheat bread, made in a shape of doughnut (couronne). Buckwheat flour doesn’t contain any gluten and adds incredible earthy flavor and dark color to the loaf.

I adjusted some of the directions from the book.

Ingredients

Stiff Sourdough Starter 

• 15g sourdough starter
• 50g water
• 75g all purpose flour

Dough

• 400 g bread flour (85%)
• 70g buckwheat flour (15%)
• 376g water (80%)
• 140g sourdough starter (30%)
• 9g salt (2%)

Directions 

Night before

• 10 pm add starter to the water and whisk together, add flour, mix well, cover loosely, let it sit at a room temp 74-78F for about 8-10 hours until starter reaches its peak (at least triples in volume). Learn how to make starter from scratch here.

Dough

• 7 am mix water (350g – 74%) with all flour and cover, let it rest for autolyse. Save leftover water for farther steps
• During the autolyse the flour absorbs the water, becoming fully hydrated. This will activate gluten development.
• 8 am add sourdough starter. 
• Mix on low speed of your mixing machine for 2-3 min, or KitchenAid on speed 3 for 3-4 minutes until well incorporated.
• Cover, let rest for 30 minutes.
• 8:30 am add salt and saved water (26g-14%).
• Mix on low speed of your mixing machine for 4-5 min, or with KitchenAid on speed 3 for 7-9 minutes until well incorporated. The dough should come up together, but still be sticky on the bottom.
• Continue gluten development and structure building by performing stretches and folds during the warm fermentation period.

• Leave to rest 30 minutes at 74-78F /23-26C.
• 9 am spray your work surface with water, wet your hands to perform 1st nice stretch and fold on a table. Fold the dough, put in a container, cover and it let rest for 45 minutes.

Note: there is 30% of sourdough starter in the dough. This will make fermentation go faster, so stay alert.

• 9:45 am 1st stretch and fold.
• 10:30 am 2nd stretch and fold.
• 11:15 am 3rd stretch and fold.
• After 3rd stretch let the dough proof for 30 minutes at 76-80F/ 23-26C. You should see some bubbles on the surface, the dough has to become lighter and puffy. We are looking for 50% rise.

Shaping 

• 11:45 am flip the bowl with the dough on to a floured surface.
• Start stretching the dough by pulling the sides, about 18 inches long.
• Roll the dough into a log (18 inches long).
• Punch the ends together to shape it as a circle, roll a little to smooth the connections.
• Place small cup inside proofing basket to create mold for our bread circle. Line the mold with kitchen towel, generously sprinkled with buckwheat flour.
• Transfer the circle, seam side up, to a prepared proofing basket.
• Cover it with plastic, and transfer the dough to rise for 14-24 hours in the refrigerator.

Baking

Next morning

• Preheat your oven to 500 F, place a cast iron pan with the lid inside for 45 minutes -1 hour.
• Remove the dough from the fridge.
• Flip it over on a parchment paper, score it with a sharp knife or a scoring lame.
• Transfer the dough on to the hot cast iron pan, cover it with the lid (to create steam for a beautiful and crunchy crust).
• Bake at 500F for 15 minutes with lid on.
• Open the lid and continue baking for 20 min at 450F

Enjoy!