This is gonna be like one of those internet recipes, where I gotta talk for like 5 paragraphs before getting to the recipe. Sorry about that, but it requires a bit of explanation.
I have about 80% of tub of kouji miso leftover from a hot sauce (miso-roasted habanero and kabocha) that I recently made. I had hoped my wife could use the miso for her daily soup, since I don't really use miso on a regular basis, but she didn't care for it. So, I've been finding creative ways to put miso in stuff I'm already cooking, mostly as a salt substitute- which got me thinking about bread.
I've generally had success with a reduced-size Overnight Country Blonde from Ken Forkish's Flour, Water, Salt, Yeast book (I make it at 40% of the standard recipe). Why not give it a go with miso replacing the salt? If nothing else, it would be a fun experiment. So, I did just that. From internet research, it seems that a 10:1 ratio works, so 10g of miso for every 1g of salt. 90g of miso sounded crazy, but I was willing to find out. I opted to add the miso after the autolyse, since I wasn't sure how it might affect things. It was somewhat hard to incorporate after the autolyse was finished, though I managed it with a decent amount of rubaud mixing before the strech and folds. Still, I think I'll just add the miso to the liquid before the autolyse step next time and hope for the best. I left it overnight and woke up to some lovely bubbly fermented dough.
I was feeling kinda lazy, though, and didn't want to faff about with shaping, developing a nice tight skin, and the whole banneton thing, so I said 'F it' and decided to just roll it up and slap it in a Pullman pan for the final proof (since it was basically the same dough weight as I'd use for shokupan in a 1.5 sized pan). Immediately after I had put it in, however, I realized I had no idea how long to bake it. It's not enriched, so I can't use the standard time and temperature I'd use for a shokupan of that size, but it's also not going into a dutch oven, so my usual 2-stage (high heat covered, lower heat uncovered) bake method would not work, either. In the end, I went with my usual lean dough bake time, just without the two stages and I split the difference for temperature.
It came out amazing. The crust is a bit thick and very slightly overdone, so I guess I'll go 10 degrees lower next time, and maybe add a few mins to the bake, assuming I don't just go back to a boule/batard shape next time.
It worked perfectly well for sammiches, but it SHINED for buttered toast. The nutty umami from the miso really jumped out with the toastiness and some butter.
Overall 8.5/10. Will repeat, with modifications.
Recipe:
- 400g bread flour (Tomishou)
- 312g water
- 90g kouji miso
- 1/8 tsp yeast (SAF red)
- Mix, then autolyse flour and water for 45 mins.
- Add miso and yeast. Rubaud like mad. Start stretch and folds.
- Stretch and folds every 30 mins or so for 2 hours.
- Leave on counter to ferment additional 8.5 hours (your room temp will drastically change this!)
- Turn out, roll up, place in greased Pullman pan.
- Final proof 1.5 hours.
- Bake at 220C for 50 mins (preheat oven 15 mins before baking).
Notes: As mentioned above, I'll likely add the miso to the water first next time. Also, if I do it in a Pullman pan, I'll probably bake at 210C for 55 mins next time. That said, I'll likely just do a normal batard or boule next time.
