Plantains in bread? Yes! It's been done before, and my interest to try it, myself, was inspired by my friend Sarah Owens of BK17 Bakery. A Brooklyn baking maven, she is currently visiting Ecuador, and sharing the exploration on her blog. Adventurous Sarah brought her sourdough with her, and she's baking with local flour and making the most of her sabbatical!
I took out an old adpted plantain bread recipe that was inspired by Peter Gordon. Fiddling with my breadstorm calculator, the numbers seemed okay. Nevertheless, I ended up changing the make up and structure to create a crustier loaf. Initially the dough, wet and unmanageable, seemed doomed, until I folded and strengthened it, having remembered some of baker Eli Colvin's advice, All to say it's useful to think out of the so-called baker's box sometimes, winging it.
Wing it I did. The dough wet and wild went into retard overnight, shaped and a short hour proof into the oven! Here is what I got!
The crust is downright gorgeous! Can’t wait to play a little more…what would you do different if anything? I bet the flavor was delicioso!
Sarah, what I did was a pre-gel of the plantain flour, the corn was soaked with twice the amount of water….it’s a very wet dough, with minimal water in the final mix…still, hard to tell what would happen, and it was a good amount of wheat levain in the mix too! I folded three or four times, then decided to retard the dough, because I thought it could use more time in gaining flavor…did..like chocolate nuances, cumin, and the achiote is evident! It’s really good with cheese, if there I would use a queso fresco maybe from the coast, or even a more Euro-Andean cheese..quite good…next might be a rice bread with different grain, quinoa?