Feedback on my first sourdough loaf

Dear Loafers, below are photos of my first sourdough loaf, and I'd love some critical feedback. Do any more experienced bakers see defects in the crumb, for instance?

This is a BBA Poilane style loaf recipe from Breadtopia, http://breadtopia.com/whole-grain-sourdough/. I used a Le Creuset instead of a La Cloche, and the bottom was a bit darker than ideal. I should have checked it once I removed the lid for phase two of the baking.

The starter was a 100% hydration white bread flour with a two-week rest in the fridge. The flavor is delicious and complex with a good but mild sourness. The crumb looks a bit dense, but it is not dense in mouth feel. It has a pleasing chew.

This was my first use of a lame and I really loved it, although as you can see I scored much too close to the center.

Cheers,
Phil

Filomatic's Blog
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Looks great! Yeah, the crumb is a bit tight -- perhaps you degassed it a bit too much when shaping it? -- but for a first sourdough? I would be very pleased with myself. :)

Thanks, Floyd. I watched the video of this being made again, and the crumb looks just like mine. There's a long 4-5 hour room temp proof after a 24-hour fridge retarding. He remarks that removing the dough after retarding you will loose essentially all the air. Nonetheless, there was little handling, just the typical boule formation technique. The other issue is that using the Le Creuset, it's harder to get down to the surface without a bit of dropping, but looking at the photos I don't see that it deflated. Anyway, I'm really excited that this came together. No way this would have worked out so well without this site. I have eliminated years of trial and error, and gone straight to advanced beginner.

and your first attempt at it was stellar for sure. Well done. The recipe doesn't say if the rye or spelt is.whole grain or not so I will guess that it is since he says it is a high % whole grain bread. It works out to 62% whole grain and the hydration is a bit less than 67%, if the starter was 100% hydration, which is very low for a bread like this if you want a more open crumb with US flour. The crumb you got is what I would expect for such a low hydration bread of this type. If you want to get the crumb more open you can up the hydration to 78% and still have a manageable dough- but use straight rice flour for the basket. . Happy SD baking

That's very helpful. It will take me some time to get up to speed on the math of baking. It seems like Excel would be a good tool to translate these hydration percentages to weight. I was frustrated with the kneading process because it was fairly sticky, but then I saw a post where Mini Oven said rye is sticky and requires less kneading anyway. Another surprise was the degree of sourness, which was right where I want it. I assume this was aided by the two week stint in the fridge. I refreshed the remaining starter 1:2:2 with whole wheat and rye, and it doubled in the fridge within 2 days.

make for sour bread.

Thanks. I really appreciate the willingness of you and others to help a newbie. I'm taking it all in. Miles to go before I sleep...

Excel is an awesome tool for calculating ingredient weights from baker's percentage. I have all my doughs in a spreadsheet so I can see immediately how much of each ingredient for the number of loaves I want to make (and for whatever weight of loaf). Check out the explanation on King Arthur Flour. This will help you figure out how to set up the spreadsheet. Once you know either the original ingredient weights or the baker's percentage for any recipe you can tweak anything and get the right amounts for the loaf size you want.

Congratulations! I would be very happy if my first SD loaf would look like yours.

You are too kind. Everything I learned about SD I learned here. I can't believe I didn't try this sooner.

Congratulations on your first sourdough bake!