Baking Sourdough Bread with Coffee

You come across tea breads now and again, but coffee bread hardly at all. Yet bread and coffee is about as ordinary a breakfast as there is, and a coffee-flavoured loaf sounded certain to be good — so I decided to bake one with sourdough.

Step 1 — Preparing the sourdough starter

Thinking about how to get coffee flavour into a loaf, there seem to be two approaches: use coffee in place of the water when mixing the dough, or work instant coffee into it.

I went with coffee in place of water. I decided to prepare the starter with coffee too, using the Iced coffee I have written about before. Would it actually rise with coffee instead of water?

Ingredients:

• Starter30g
• Bread flour (Kitanokaori)20g
• Iced coffee20cc

Conditions:

• Date13 August 2021
• Room temperature27℃
• Humidity75%

1. To 30g of starter, add 20g of bread flour and 20cc of iced coffee, and mix well.

The starter here is the one I keep going with flour and water for all my sourdough — in this case the one raised on bread flour alone. As long as it is reasonably lively the quantities can be approximate. Aim for the new coffee and flour together to come to slightly more than the starter, and for the whole thing to give you enough for one bake — here, at least 60g.

2. Leave it at room temperature.

How fast it rises depends on temperature and humidity, but normally bubbles appear on the surface within one to two hours and it roughly doubles after several. This time I left it about three hours. I was slightly worried that sourdough would not rise on coffee at all, but it fermented. It did seem slower than with water, though. You can see it in the photographs: after three hours it had not quite doubled, and the bubbles were mostly fine ones.

While waiting for this starter to rise, I get on with step 2 up to point 2.

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Step 2 — Making the dough

This coffee bread was largely made up as I went, so I have no idea what the right answer is. I guessed it would be better a little sweet, so I added sugar, which I normally never do. Beyond that it is really just iced coffee in place of water, and otherwise the Basic Sourdough Bread: A Step-by-Step Recipe.

Ingredients:

• Starter60g
• Bread flour (Kitanokaori)250g
• Iced coffee170cc
• Sugar1 tbsp
• Salt4g

Mixing the flour, water and salt

1. Dissolve the measured sugar and salt thoroughly in the iced coffee, then pour it over the flour. Think of it as bringing the flour and coffee together rather than kneading them. Start with the scraper, turning the flour up from the bottom of the bowl. Gradually the two become one thing. Once they are more or less combined, use your hands to gather it into a single mass.

2. Cover the bowl and leave it in the fridge until the starter from step 1 is ready. You are not building gluten by kneading; you are building it by waiting.

Mixing the starter into the dough

3. Now work the starter from step 1 into the rested dough. Begin by stretching the dough out flat. Take hold of an edge and pull — gluten has formed, so it should stretch. Put 60g of starter on the stretched dough, fold it in towards the centre, and keep working it for a while. The hydration is high and it will stick to your hands. Do not worry about it.

4. Cover the bowl and leave it at room temperature for 30 minutes to an hour.

Stretch and fold

5. The first stretch and fold. It is exactly what it sounds like: stretch, then fold. Working around the round of dough, stretch and fold it roughly six to eight times. Not kneading — stretching gently and folding. That is the point.

6. Cover the bowl and leave it at room temperature for one to two hours.

7. The second stretch and fold. The dough has begun to rise, so work more gently than the first time to avoid knocking the air out of it. This time, four to six stretches and folds.

8. Cover the bowl and leave it at room temperature for two to three hours.

Shaping the dough

9. Using the scraper, ease the dough gently out of the bowl onto a floured surface. Flatten it lightly into a rough square, fold it in from all four sides, shape it loosely, and let it rest for 30 to 60 minutes.

10. Finally, stretch and fold about four more times to build tension across the surface, and shape it into an oval. Dust the top with flour and place it in a cloth-lined banneton — turning it over, so the floured surface sits at the bottom of the basket.

11. The final proof. Four to six hours in the fridge should roughly double it. Press the dough lightly with the pad of a finger: if it springs back with some tension, it is ready.

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Step 3 — Baking

What you need:

• Dutch oven (220mm internal diameter, 100mm deep)
• Baking paper
• Razor blade

1. Put the Dutch oven in the oven and preheat to 250°C.

2. Once it is up to temperature, turn the dough out of the basket onto a sheet of baking paper.

3. Score the top with the razor.

4. Take out the Dutch oven, lower the dough in on its paper, put the lid on, and bake at 230°C for 25 minutes.

5. Take the lid off and bake at 240°C for a further 10 minutes.

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How it turned out

Baking sourdough with coffee in place of water made no great difference in itself. Fermentation did feel a little slower, so allow a bit more time for it, or increase the amount of starter.

As for eating it: very good indeed. Good enough that I wonder why coffee bread is not more widely made. A soft, chewy crumb, with the gentle bitterness of coffee coming through as you chew. I prefer it to tea bread, personally. Do give it a try.

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The coffee I use for this loaf is this one.

YEMEN, 250g