After some experimentation I baked what I consider a good enough sourdough. The recipe is as follows:
My starter consists of 100% rye and the flour for the dough is a mix of bread flour, All Purpose (AP) flour and rye
I begin with 15g starter which I feed with 30g AP flour and 30 ml water. Feeding time is about 9 hours. I then do a second feed using 15g of the fed starter and again 30g AP flour and 30ml water. This time the feeding period is 4 hours and 30 minutes.
My flour consiss of 330g bread flour (12% protein), 110g AP flour (11.7% protein) and 15g rye flour.
Water added to flour: 327 ml.
I feed the levain starting in the evening of the previous day at a temperature of about 22º C and on the morning of the following day discard all levain bar 15g and give it another feed at about 25º C.
I autolyse the flour in a covered container just over one hour before mixing in the levain and the salt at 23º to 25º C. I mix the levain in the autolysed dough with wet hands and add the salt to the dough mixture.
I leave the dough covered for 30 minutes at about 25º C and I do three stretch and folds at 30 minute intervals. I bulk ferment the dough for three hours until it rises by about 20%. I then preshape the dough and leave covered for half an hour. Then I shape the dough using a dough scraper and dry hands and place it in a banneton floured with rice flour. I cover the banneton with a plastic bag and leave it in the refrigerator to retard for a few hours. I preheat the oven to 230º C. I then remove the dough from the banneton by turning it over on to greaseproof paper, use a soft brush to remove any extra rice flour from the dough surface and score it. I place the dough in a Dutch oven lightly spray with water and and bake it for 18 minutes with the lid on and then I remove the lid and continue baking for 25 minutes at 200º C. I remove the loaf and cool it on a rack for at least one hour before slicing.
The bread is fine, but my question is how could I get it to have a softer crust?
If you want softer crust, fats are your friend. They are known as tenderizers, so they make crust (and crumb) softer and more delicate. You could replace part of the water with milk, add butter or oil etc. etc.
Otherwise you could bake it less or at a lower temperature or store in a place with high humidity.
Try adding 5% butter, and bake with the lid on the whole time. Should yield a much softer crust.
5% butter as a baker's percentage? I'm going to try this and want to make sure...
Yes bakers percentage. I let it come up to room temp and mix in with the rest of ingredients after autolyse. It’s such a small percentage no need to do it in a mixer ala brioche.
Also I just read in another thread that adding yogurt at 30g per 1000g flour helps soften the crust as well
Thank you for the suggestions. I’ll start by adding some oil or butter. I think that I was mislead by the fact that all “beginners’” sourdough recipes that I’ve seen didn’t mention adding any kind of fat. Now having got a working recipe, I feel more confident to try variations.
I added 25ml virgin olive oil and the sourdough was as soft and fluffy as you could imagine. Absolutely delightful to eat. At last, I found a recipe that will keep me happy every time I want to have good sourdough.
Naturally, I’m now ready to experiment with other recipes, knowing that I have a fallback!