TwD: Semolina Bread

 This Tuesday's Baking with Julia recipe and the second TWD bake for the month of July is the Semolina Bread by contributing baker Nick Malgieri.   This is the second bread recipe of his that I've made the first one being his Old-Fashioned Raisin Bread which my entire family loved.   I've also made various kinds of semolina breads before but this is the first time I made a version that makes use of only commercial yeast via the "flying sponge" method where all the yeast called for in the recipe is already added to a mixture of equal parts flour and water, allowed to ferment for about two hours, then eventually added to the final dough mix.  I must say that I'm loving this sponge method in bread baking because of how super quick it is to whip up unlike other pre-ferments like a biga or poolish that takes about 12 or more hours to ferment.

Semolina Bread with Black Sesame Seeds

Before I even tried making this sourdough semolina bread found in Jeffrey Hamelman's Bread: A Baker's Book of Techniques and Recipes, I first did some research about the differences between semolina flour and durum wheat flour.  What I've learned (in a nutshell) is that both semolina and durum flour are both ground from the endosperm of the durum wheat kernel but semolina is coarser and more yellow while durum flour is a by-product of the grinding of the semolina and has the consistency of regular flour with only a slight yellowish hue.  Many of the books that I've read strongly suggest only using fancy or extra fancy durum flour instead of semolina flour as the latter may not work for a particular bread recipe.  I've read from a few websites though that semolina flour could still yield excellent results in bread making if allowed a lengthy autolyse (about 30 minutes or longer).  Having a few pounds of the actual durum flour that I bought from a local Italian food supplier will delay my finding out if this is true or not though.  For anyone who wants to learn more about durum wheat and its gluten properties, etc this is a great article.