Sourdough made with Durum Semolina

This is one of Mrs. McBugbear's recipes.  We'd made lasagna on the weekend and there was some Durum Semolina leftover from making the noodles so Mrs McBugbear used it in a sourdough loaf.  I joked with my dear wife that we should boil the bread rather than toasting it.  (Please don't groan too loud.)  The loaf turned out to be a lovely golden colour almost like cornbread..  Mrs. McBugbear also made a loaf using some Bulgar wheat. I thought she should have added parsley, sun-dried tomatoes, onions and preserved lemon to the Bulgar loaf and we could have had Tabbouleh Sourdough!

Durum Semolina Sourdough

Ingredients:

2 cups of Durum Semolina
1 cups of all purpose flour (unbleached if possible)
2 cups of starter (twice proofed)
1 tsp of salt
1/2 cup of water
1-3 tsp of wheat gluten (aka gluten flour or vital wheat gluten) (optional)
corn meal or butter

Equipment:

Bread Pan (optional)
Non-reactive Mixing Bowl
Cookie sheet and Pizza Stone
Counter Top Mixer with dough hook

Proof your starter, my starter needs two proofs to really get a head of steam going and I gather this is typical.  Place the salt and water in the mixer.  Add the flours and mix.  Add the sourdough starter and mix until the dough forms into balls you'll have to gauge for yourself whether you need to add water or flour.  Knead the dough by hand until the ball of dough seems satiny smooth.  Now for the options, either free form a loaf and place it on the cookie sheet using the cornmeal to prevent it from sticking to the sheet or butter a non-stick bread pan.  Cover the dough and let rise until doubled in size, with my starter this takes an hour or two.  Place the pizza stone in the oven if you're using it.  Pre-heat the oven to 375F and bake the loaf for 55 minutes.  Remove from the oven and allow to cool on a wire rack.

A couple of things you'll note in the recipe.  No oil and no milk.  It's been my experience that adding oil and milk shortens the shelf-life of our loaves.  The sourdough tends to get stale a bit faster and when using milk we have a much higher incidence of blue mold on our bread.  We tend to make three loaves on the weekend to get us through the entire week, freezing two of the loaves.  The frozen loaves aren't quite as good but no one has the time to bake three times a week.