Just when I was beginning to think I knew what I was doing I am having some sourdough disasters. My starter appears to be healthy - I feed it 1-2-2 with bread flour and bottled spring water and it doubles in (today) 6 hours in my quite cool kitchen. On Friday night I started what I have labelled "Jmonkey and Susan's" sourdough, the one where all the ingredients are mixed and it sits on the counter ovenight. The dough seemed fine, maybe a bit on the wet side but I am sooooo paranoid about adding extra flour. It shaped nicely into a boule and and went into a parchment lined banneton and spent the night in the refrigerator. I preheated the oven with stone to 500* and baked the loaf under my ss mixing bowl. It rose a reasonable amount but is as heavy as lead, and once it was cold I cut it in two. Once again I found a weird crumb - large caverns and the texture of very firm foam rubber. I know I baked this one with success because I had written "excellent!" on the page, probably after the first time I tried it. This one even has a strange smell and I noticed it didn't develop the nice dark crust and has some dark blotches. So please, can anyone come up with an answer? (Before I jump off the ferry!) I'm going to mix up a batch of the Almost No Knead bread - my son gave me several bottle of beer to use as he reckons it isn't fit to drink. If this bread fails I may put the drinking part to the test, A.
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Annie,
Glad the train is back on the rails, so to speak. Sounds like you've chased away the Grinch. Nice going!
Howard