3 Day Old Rye Starter Makes a fine Sourdough the Old School Way

Hey look Mom!  No sprouts in this bread…….We had planned on making a Dark Pumpernickel based on the IJTB formula that greedybread made a few weeks ago.  But this recipe calls for making a rye starter from scratch that calls for a discard at the end of 48 hours.

Well, you know how much I hat to discard any food, so I took the discard from the 2nd feeding at the 48 hour mark here http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/42120/finally-dark-pumpernickel and feed it again to make this basic 1:2:3 sourdough bread.  We were out of white bread anyway and this one came out 15% whole rye which is white bread around here.

This starter had risen 50% in the first 24 hours and had doubled after the 2nd feeding at the 48 hour mark.  The amazing part was that it doubled 4 times, stirring it down each time after the 3rd feeding and by the end of 72 hours.  Wow! That is when we knew it was ready to raise a loaf of white bread if not the heavy pumpernickel it would raise tomorrow

We originally made the dough at what we thought was the standard 71%  or this recipe but forgot the levain was not 100% hydration like the recipe calls for but only 73% hydration.  So we added enough water to get it up to an overall 71% hydration.

After trying to slap this dough around we knew it was still too dry since the rest of the flour was bread flour from Winco’s bins.  We added another 50 g of water to get the dough to where it felt like a 71% hydration dough that you could do 2 slaps to 1 fold with. 

After 3 sets of slap and folds on 20 minute intervals and 3 sets of stretch and folds from the compass points on 30 minute intervals we did 90 minutes of bulk ferment on the 88 F counter. Before pre-shaping and after a 10 minute wait for the final shaping, the dough was placed seam side down in a rice floured basket.

It was bagged and left on the counter for a 90 minute shaped proof and then placed in the fridge for 1 hour shaped retard.  Once the dough came out of the fridge to warm up we firs up BO Betsy to a 500 F preheat with the combo cooker on the bottom stone

Once BOB said she was ready we un-molded the dough onto parchment on a peel and then slashed it in a triangle and slid it into the combo cooker for 18 minutes of covered steam while turning the oven down to 450 F when the bread went in.

Once the lid came off we turned the oven down to 425 F and continued baking for 5 minutes when we took the bread off the bottom of the combo cooker so it could finish baking on the bottom stone.  After 7 more minutes when the bread thumped done on the bottom, we then turned of the oven and left the bread  on the stone for 5 more minutes with oven door ajar to really crisp the skin,

The bread sprang bloomed and browed very well for a 3 day old starter.  It even got some blisters on the skin too.  Can’t wait to cit into it for dinner and see hoe the crumb fared – so far so good.  Can’t wait to make the dark pumpernickel tomorrow with this same starter the old school way.  

Lucy reminds us to not forget that great salad to go with the Ahi Tuna Tacos