Hi all,
I baked my first two successful sourdough loaves on Monday and, thinking I would not be baking for a week or two, fed and then refrigerated my starter. Lo and behold, I've been asked to bring bread to a dinner party tomorrow night (Friday) and would like to have my loaves baked by tomorrow afternoon. I brought my refrigerated starter to just about room temp early this morning, fed it, let it sit for 2.5 hrs, and then made my levain (1 tbsp starter, 200 50/50 WW AP flour blend + 200 g water). I found it rather tough to incorporate my starter into the 200 g water, as it was extremely elastic, almost like rubber bands. I'm now letting the levain rest 12 hours before [hopefully] making my dough tonight and doing a cold 12-16 hr retardation over night.
I know this has been a rather rushed process and I should have begun reviving my starter yesterday, but...alas! I'm wondering if any of you much more experienced bakers have suggestions for my inevitable troubleshooting a few hours from now. Has anyone successfully gone from refrigerated starter to loaf in about a day and a half? Is there any chance my levain will even pass the float test? Elastic starter indicative of a gummy loaf? Apologies for the abundance of questions, but any advice would be greatly appreciated =)
If you are only building a levain with a little of your refrigerated starter, and that starter is healthy, I can't see any problem. I generally follow roughly your procedure anyway without issue. Obviously in an ideal world you would give an extra booster feed but unless your starter has been refrigerated for weeks as many do and build levain up step by step, I wouldn't sweat.
Thanks for putting my mind at ease. Have you ever had the issue with elastic starter?
Is your starter kept quite firm? Mine is 100% hydration so more of a batter than a dough and usually just amalgamates with a little swirl. It will be fine I think, there's no such thing as a failure. If it goes a bit wrong take croutons to dinner!
:)
Aside from some lackluster scoring, which seemed give way to a pretty uneven rise in the oven, I am pretty pleased with the first finished loaf! My technique of wetting the crust a bit and dabbing on extra sesame for show/crunch did not exactly go as planned, but they are nicely incorporated on the inside :) It will all come down to crumb and taste, however. Thank you all so much for the responses and encouragement--what a lovely community this is!
Very pleased with my lemon zest and herb loaf. This recipe is Tartine's olive bread, sans olives. Just had to readjust my knife and watch a video or two on scoring properly! This guy proved a bit longer and warmed up quite a bit in my humid kitchen
. Hoping I don't miss the olives in it too much (my dinner host tonight does not care for them...sigh...)
You see, you don't need two days of prepping the starter. Frankly, t would have skipped the feeding and just used some of the warmed (to make sure it was mature) 4 to 5 day old starter to build the levain for the loaves. Building the levain preps the starter in the process.
Mini