Grano arso or burned wheat is something I find deliciously satisfying in bread and pasta. Still, my first attempt at using it didn’t yield the light or full of oven spring desired in the crumb. It felt dense and a wee bit too rustic.

This weekend it was back to the drawing board with parameters and ingredients spun around and reconfigured. I used a pasta madre, or solid sourdough of semola rimacinata. Then I broke up the total flour into different percentages composed of half regular bread flour, high extraction rye, and semola in smaller quantities, with grano arso being the flavor enhancer. It worked. Results below.