DESSERT - Crescenzin

Crescenzin
Recipe for 2 round loaves

Ingredients

150 g wholegrain spelt flour
150 g wholegrain rye flour
300 g pasta vecchia dough
500 g sourdough starter
180 ml water
100 g shelled walnuts, chopped
250 g dried figs, chopped
50 g raisins
15 g salt
1 level tsp of brown sugar
1 knob of butter, melted

Procedure
About 10/12 hours before making the final dough, heat the water to about 50°C, dissolve the salt and sugar in it, add the two wholegrain flours and mix well. Keep covered at room temperature.
Also roughly 10 hours before making the final dough, prepare the pasta vecchia (which means “old dough”) using 100 g 0 Manitoba strong flour, 100 g 00 weak flour, 100 ml warm water and 4 g brewers yeast.
To obtain the quantity of sourdough shown above, you will need to feed your starter 3 times. Each time, add a quantity of flour equal to the starter’s weight plus half of its weight in water at 40°C. Wait until the starter triples in volume before feeding it again. The last feeding must be done about 10 hours before making the final bread dough, but with half strong flour and half wholegrain rye flour.
Before making the final dough, prepare the dried fruit and nuts: chop the figs and walnut halves and mix them with the raisins and melted butter.
Finally, mix the pasta vecchia, the sourdough starter, the wholegrain flour prepared previously and the dried fruit and nuts for 10 minutes in the dough mixer. Let the dough rise for about 1 hour, then knead it gently and form it into two round loaves: let them rise again for 2 hours at 30°C in a humid environment (for example, in the oven at 30°C with a pan of lukewarm water on the bottom). At the end of the rising period, the loaves must be doubled in volume: put them in the oven pre-heated to 200°C for 10 minutes with steam and continue baking for another 30 minutes at 180°C, without steam.
This sweet tasting bread is perfect for enjoying at the end of a meal, or with aged cheese and cold cuts, or lightly spread with a local variety of honey.