First Solo Sourdough Bake

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Mamabread on 24 Aug 2019 at 11:23

Hi All, 

I’ve just dived into the world of baking naturally leavened bread and I’m just a tiny bit obsessed. I’ve been drooling over my friend’s instagram pictures for the past couple of years. (He’s a chef in Toronto/MTL who bakes sourdough weekly). Last week my sister brought me some of his starter. Which was handed to him from another chef, who got it from his grandmother and apparently it’s very very old. So I was super excited to dive in and make some bread. My sister gave me a lesson and we used my king Arthur white bread flour with 75% hydration and I couldn’t shape figure out how to shape a wet blob of flour goo for the life of me. But it still tasted delicious and after a week of reading the perfect loaf blog almost cover to cover I was read to try again. 

I used the same recipe as last week but with a little less water. 38% starter, 100% bread flour, 70% water, 2.2% salt. That being said I put a lot of flour on the counter before shaping and in the basket after to avoid sticking and ripping. But I followed the method from the perfect loaf beginner bread. With the addition of using a stand mixer and mixing/kneading the dough until a windowpane could be seen after the autolyse. The dough didn’t seem to rise very much during the 5.5hours bulk in my 75 degree kitchen with 3 sets of folds 30mins apart. But shaping went well. Also, they didn’t seem to rise much in the fridge overnight.  But I was happy with the end result. Baked in my cast iron crocks at 480, 30 mins with the lid on 20 with the lid off. Hopefully, I’ll get the same or better result next week. 

 

My my only real question right now is, why do some recipes call for kneading until the windowpane  and some don’t include that step at all? 

(Don’t really know how to add pictures yet sorry, I’m typing from my cell phone)

WOWZER, you are off to a phenomenal start!

Many artisan bakers are not developing the gluten early in the mix. They are mixing water and flour (autolyse) and allowing time to develop the gluten on it’s own. If a dough is over worked (mixer) it can lose a noticeable amount of flavor.

Keep on keeping on... You are doing GREAT.

Danny

Thanks so much! I’ve been doing a lot of research and  I put a lot of effort into it. I’m pretty sure it was just a fluke but I can’t wait to try it again next weekend. 

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not.a.crumb.left on 25 Aug 2019 at 03:38

that is an amazing result for your first bake! Nevermind for any bake....You don't want to know what my first one looked like and a post about that lurking somewhere on here...

Enjoy eating it and then more baking now that you've got the bug... Kat

What Danny said about gluten development! If you’re retarding overnight you can probably shorten up your primary fermentation to 3-4 hours, with maybe 45 minutes proof at room temp after shaping, then put it to bed. You’ll see no noticeable rise overnight if your refrigeration is at 40 degrees or cooler. But you’ll get good oven spring when you bake the next day (and no need to let refrigerated loaf come to room temp - put it in the hot oven right out of the fridge).  If you want a little more color, reverse your lid on/lid off times.

Really nice bake!

Thank you for the advice. I hadn’t planned on leaving it for 5.5 hours for the primary fermentation but I was worried that the dough hadn’t risen enough. I’ll try going with my original plan of 4 hours next time. Also, thanks for letting me know that I can put them straight into the oven from the fridge. I was unsure about that and took them out about 1 hour before baking last time. And I’ll definitely give them more of the time without the lid to see some color.

thanks!! 

Mama, I learned in the last week that I have often been over proofing my dough. And I’ve been baking bread for 25 yr or so!

It is my nature to push things to the limit. My thought was to ferment long enough to get large bubbles (my goal lately was extreme open crumb). I am learning that I need to rely on oven spring to get the explosive increase in gas for lift. “O ye of little faith”. And guess what? It was a too for one. When I got open crumb, I got ears...

I’m not absolutely sure, but at this time I don’t think that really long fermentation is conducive to open crumb and/or ears. This new found success is by no means a badge of experience. Only time and many successful loaves down the road will  give definitive credence to these thoughts.

Here is my latest experiment. The test compared two different levains using the same formula and identical handling.

 

For me at least, I need to have faith in my levain.

Danny

I can’t wait to get the hang of things and start experimenting more. Unfortunately, I only have time for baking on weekends right now. But it’s cool to see how one factor can produce such a difference in the 2 loaves. They both still look great to me though! I’m going to try and have more faith in the overnight proof and the oven this week! Thanks for commenting! I really appreciate how welcoming this community is to newbies.