Broa is a type of corn and rye/wheat bread traditionally made in Portugal, Galicia, Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, and Brazil. Unlike the cornbread typical of the southern United States, broa is made from a mixture of cornmeal and rye or wheat flour.
When baking with corn you need to deploy different strategies. Corn flour, for instance, has no gluten. As a consequence the whole dough will not stick together as nicely as regular wheat dough. At the same time the bread is a little denser, as not as much air can be trapped inside of the dough when baking.
- 200 grams of rye flour (50%)
- 200 grams of corn flour (50%)
- 80 grams of sourdough starter (20%)
- 280 grams of warm water (70%)
- 8 grams of salt (2%)
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Mix all the ingredients together until you see that the flour has been nicely incorporated.
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Place it in a covered bowl.
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Let it ferment at room temperature for around 10 hours. In my case the room has around 22°C. If it is colder, it might take longer. If warmer, less time. Changing this variable will increase the sourness of the final bread. This is personal preference. More sour bread will also have a longer shelf life.
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Flour the surface with a lot of flour.
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Take the dough and place it on the flour
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Try to form a little bit of a ball. Don't worry, it will not properly hold together. That's because of the corn flour and rye.
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Place it in a rice-flowered banneton. Don't save on the flour. You do not want it to stick together.
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Cover the banneton and place it in the fridge for 24 hours. My fridge has around 5°C.
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We will be baking the bread in a dutch oven. You could also just place it directly on a stone in the oven. Then you would need a tray of water in the oven as water source though.
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Flip the bread into pre-heated dutch oven, or on the stone.
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Bake for 25 minutes with lid covered and 20 minutes without the lid. I bake at 230°C. Your oven might work differently. Wait until the crust has a nice brown color.
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Brush of any excess flour.
Wait 30 minutes before cutting. From experience the bread can survive 2 weeks depending on how long you fermented the the dough.
