Arkatena loaf (with chickpea flour starter)

Another "Bread Matters" recipe, this one begins with a chickpea (gram) flour starter - which smells HORRIBLE!!! Again, only some of the active starter (on Day 4) is used in the production leaven (which includes some chickpea flour and is much doughy-er than a sponge). I left this production leaven in the fridge overnight. Next day that was brought to room temperature. After a few hours I kneaded flour (just white and wholemeal), water and salt together, before kneading in the production leaven. This is then treated like the other Bread Matters sourdoughs, and left under an upturned bowl for an hour before being stretched and folded.

This is where it all went wrong!!! My oven broke (electrical fault).. just wouldn't switch on at all! Disaster! What to do.....???? Well, I put the folded dough in a plastic box and put it in the freezer! I have frozen pizza dough, and naan bread dough in the past with no ill-effects, so figured it was worth a try! 2 days later, when the oven was fixed, I took the dough out and left it to come to defrost overnight. Then it was shaped and left to prove supported in a bowl lined with a flour-dusted tea towel for 4 hours.

Once baked, this was the result....

A delicious loaf! Really chewy, a hint of the sourdough starter (but tasting NOTHING like the hideous chickpea flour starter had smelt!!), good crust (as I used my conventional non-fan oven function and lots of sprayed water).... One of my favourite loaves ever.