Levain de Campagne

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rev_jon on 29 Jan 2019 at 21:06

From How to Make Bread by E. Hadjiandreou

  • 250g Bread Flour (BRM)
  • 100g Whole-wheat flour (BRM)
  • 50g Rye flour (BRM)
  • 6g salt
  • 150g sourdough starter (100% made with KAF AP & bread flour)
  • 300g water 

79% hydration

4 pull and fold style kneads, 10 minutes apart

overnight rest in fridge (12 hours)

2 hours on counter to come to room temp before shaping

proof in round banneton 2 hours at 75 degrees-ish (oven with periodic blasts of bread proof setting) 

at 2 hours started preheating oven to 500, pressing finger slightly into dough mostly springs back, if i push it in real deep it springs back mostly, but leaves indent, so i'm hoping that's the right level of proofing

preheat stone for 30min

did two slashes at an ear-encouraging angle

used half-sheet pan under baking stone, poured one cup water in as i added bread, then another cup about 15 minutes in

baked for 30 minutes

Results: looks nice, but the slashes didn't really open up much, it kind of bulged like a mylar balloon instead of keeping the nice round shape it had coming out of the banneton, so I'm still having issues with the bottom crust browning enough and there being enough opening from the slashes. My knife may be too dull, or it could be steam. I think next time i'll try the soaked rags method. Also plan to order a lame soon. 

 

 

 

  1. Do you have a shot of the crumb?
  2. How does it taste?  I calculate salt content at 1.26%, which is too low.  Most recipes recommend ~2%, and I usually use 2.2%
  3. What kind of a baking stone are you using?  You should be getting a much darker bottom crust.
  4. I'd suggest reducing the temperature to 475F after  loading the loaf.

Hi Bart,

Thanks for reading and responding! I was just logging in today to add a comment about the taste. Here is a picture of the crumb:

IMG_0745.jpg

As for taste, it was the most bland bread I have made to date! I really thought that the cold bulk fermentation would help, but I guess it needs more salt as well. 

The baking stone is from Williams Sonoma, their store-brand baking stone. I hadn't found this site yet, so I didn't know about Fibrament. Wondering if the stone is a dud, because I agree that the bottom crust is puzzlingly pale. 

Today I'm almost ready to put a loaf using The Perfect Loaf Beginner's Sourdough Bread recipe and I'm going to cook it in a lidded Dutch Oven instead of on the stone, hoping that will help with my bottom crust issues. The entire process for that loaf was very different. I think part of my taste issues may have been that I didn't know what I was doing with regards to the feeding ratios for my starter. I was doing more like 2:1:1 starter:flour:water, whereas The Perfect Loaf has you do 1:5:5! 

I'll have a write-up of my new loaves soon. 

Thanks!