Thanksgiving Sourdough Bread for Stuffing

Every year we bake up a simple bread for Thanksgiving stuffing.  Sometimes it is a poolish, sometimes it is yeast water or a YW and SD combination and sometimes, like this year, it is a simple SD near white bread.

The near 100% hydration levain was built in (3) 4 hour stages to 105 g from 5 g of rye 66% hydration starter that had been retarded for 12 weeks.  Each stage was progressively larger and none was tossed.  The added flour and water was 50 g each and half the flour used for the levain was whole wheat and half was whole rye - 25 g each.  The levain was then retarded for 12 hours after it had doubled.

The whole grains in the levain were 15% of the flour and the dough flour was half LaFama AP and half KA bread flour.  The dough hydration was 67% and the overall hydration was 71%.  The dough flour was autolysed for 1 hour with the slat sprinkled on top.

Yes, this is the basic 1:2, 3 recipe for sourdough and one of my favorites and fabul;ous if retarded.  This ended up being a pretty slack dough for some reason.but it did finally come together after 3 sets of slap and folds of 8, 1 and 1 minute and 3 sets of stretch and folds from the compass points only - all on 20 minute intervals.

After a 10 minute rest it was pre-shaped into a longish batard and then final shaped to fit into the rice floured, cloth lined basket.  Before it when in seam side up I did lightly flour the top of the dough knowing, since it was so wet, that it would stick otherwise.

I put the bagged basket on a heating pas and proofed it at 82 F for 6 hours.  The oven was preheated to 550 F with Mega Steam placed on the bottom rack.   Once the dough was un-molded onto parchment on a peel, It was so warm and wet it immediately started to spread. The batard was slashed 3 times and slid onto the bottom stone for 12 minutes of steam. 

2 minutes later the oven was turned down to 450 F for the final 10 minutes of steam.  Once the steam came out, we turned the oven down to 425 F - convection and baked the bread for another 10 minutes until it read 210 F on the inside when it was removed to a cooling rack.

It sprang, bloomed and browned nicely for being so spread out.  It smelled great when it came out of the oven too.  The crust came out thin and crisp but it did go soft by the next morning  The crumb was nicely open, moist, glossy and soft. The taste was lnot quite medium sour and more so the next morning.  This bread is better if retarded from a taste point of view and very close the old style SFSD of yore.

This bread is perfect for this year’s Thanksgiving stuffing.  After having a couple of slices toasted with butter and jam for breakfast this morning, my wife pinched half it for gifting at work.  This is her kind of bread!.  Have a great Thanksgiving everyone!