I made my fourth and fifth sourdough loaves using the beginner sourdough recipe from Maurizio’s The Perfect Loaf. I’m very happy with them overall, still no ears but I can live with that. Again I like the crust and crumb. I tired a very very long sort of but not really autolyze, it had the salt in it as per Trevor Wilson’s Champlain bread recipe but did it for 10 hours in order to fit into my schedule. I’m not really sure what effect that had on the bread. I also lowered the temperature to 425ºC after taking the lid off the Dutch oven and baked for 20-22 mins lid off. I’m happy that the crust wasn’t overbaked as my previous loaf number 2 was.
Those look great, tons of oven spring.
Thank you Barry.
What a beauty you have there. Nicely done
hester
Thank you Hester, nice of you to say.
I see your crumb is a little more towards the irregular artisinal instead of that glossy uniform lace of your last loaves? Did you slack up on the fermentation time?
I know on Maurizio's pictures, it looks like he scores it on the side like that, but he's really scoring the side of the very top of the loaf. Imagine the loaf has a head, he slits the neck on one side. A gruesome metaphor, but...
Yes I shortened the bulk fermentation quite a bit from the time of mixing the levain into the pre-dough to preshaping was only 2.5 hrs. Then cold proof was about 18 hours.
Yes I think I scored too far down the side of the dough. I’d never tried scoring that low before but wanted to see if it could help with the ear which it really didn’t. So imagining the banneton upside down, would the score be more at the angle between the flat top and the angled side of the banneton and thus the dough?
Maurizio looks like he would cut right where the flat top meets the angled side.
Personally, I make the score right in the center. The blade is curved, and I cut into the dough at a side angle, not directly down, but its right at the top of the dome.
That is what I’ve tried before and I think I’ll go back to that or maybe just slightly off centre and with a good angle to the blade.
What temp are you bulking at?
I try to bulk ferment around 78-80ºC.