Sourdough baking

Sourdough experiment #4. Crust turned out well, wanted to capture the crust and crumb of this one for future reference (Excuse the YouTube link, I have nowhere else to share yet).

• 65% hydration (trying for a more sandwich style loaf).
• 1.7% salt
• 20% starter
• 22º-25º bulk ferment (5 hours + shape and 1 hour extra rise)
• 36 hour cold ferment
• Straight in to 250º oven
• Turned down to 240º
• 20 minutes baked covered with steam
• 15 minutes on the rack at 230ºC
• 30 minute rest in open oven

I am including a recipe that I wrote up for my niece.

This is a recipe that I have been perfecting over the last several months to work with my weekday schedule. The timing of the recipe is perfect for when you just don’t have time to put in all of the steps. It is an All-In-One recipe so all of your ingredients go in at the same time.

Ingredients 810 grams bread flour - I use King Arthur 90 grams einkorn - Jovial brand is my go to and available at Whole Foods 18 grams salt - fine sea salt combines nicely 180 grams starter - Feed 1:3:3 the morning you are going to put your dough together.1 603 grams water - room temperature

Mix all of your flour and salt well with a whisk then add your starter and water and then mix using a pull and fold motion until it is combined and then continue for a bit. I go for a total of 4 minutes. What I do to keep the dough from forming a skin and drying out is cover the bowl with a kitchen towel and then cover that with a plate

In 1 hour do your first stretch and fold. With my gluten strengthening moves I go less aggressively as I go along. I am stretching fairly aggressively on the first set. Pulling as far as the dough will let me without tearing and rotating the bowl 90o and then repeating 3 more times. After 30 minutes I do set 2 of the stretch and folds. On this set I pull only until it covers the mass of the dough. 30 minutes later I do the 3rd set of stretch and folds. This time I only stretch about half way across the bulk of the dough.

When I finish the 3rd set of S & Fs I put my dough in a straight sided bowl where I can see the progress of the rise. You are shooting for a total increase in bulk of 30%. Then put the whole thing in the fridge for 24 hours. My fridge stays at 34oF and during that time the dough will have continued rising a bit and will be at roughly 50% increase.

Now is time to divide the dough into 2 equal size masses and do a preshape on the counter. Let the dough rest for 30 minutes and shape into boules or batards and put them into your bannetons. Then bag them up and back to the fridge for 24 more hours.2

I preheat my Dutch oven at 450 for 1 hour. Score the dough and load into the DO. I add 2 ice cubes to the pot3 then cover and bake for 22 minutes. Remove the top and continue to bake for 22 more minutes then take it out of the oven. Let fully cool and enjoy.

1 I know you know this but 1:3:3 in this case would be 33g starter, 99g flour and 99g water. That will give you plenty starter to get 180g and have enough to feed and continue your starter. I do this rather than build a levain because that is just fiddly.

2 I really like the Reynolds roasting bags in the “chicken” size. They are big enough for your banneton and last for a very long time. I have 3 that I’ve been using for over a year!

3 If you are not familiar with this trick, it is really cool. The ice cube does 2 things. First it lowers the temperature for just a little bit to prevent the crust from setting too soon and it also provides more humidity in the DO so that the outside of the loaf will gelatinize and make a cracker like crust.

Uses only 100% whole grain King Arthur whole wheat flour, water, and whole wheat sourdough starter. First rise can take 24 hours. After baking and resting, needs to be cut and used or frozen almost immediately, or it gets really hard and dense. Otherwise very nice.

Question - the inside feels sticky when freshly cut even though the digital temperature probe read the right temperature for it to be done. It's not raw dough, just sticky. Am I doing something wrong? Also, how can I make it fluffier, or will that require mixing in white flour?

With starter from Kensington Sourdough in Toronto, this is our first ever sourdough loaf. Been making yeast-risen bread for a while, but first foray into sourdough.

We went on a run, then swam in the ocean, then I gave this gift at the end!

My wife made homemade sourdough English muffins. They were stretchy and chewy and utterly amazing. I am ruined for grocery stores English muffins.

OK, just posting some old bake pictures to get this ball rolling!

Experiments with my current sourdough culture. Trying to find that sweet spot between flavour and effort.

I have screwed around with sourdough for years but always fall out of it because it’s a pain n the ass to maintain and cook.

So this time, I’m determined to make sourdough bend to my schedule, rather than rearrange my life around feeding the beast.

Recipe overview:

• Wallaby bakers flour (Australian brand).
• 72% hydration
• 10% starter
• 1.7% salt

Method:

• “no knead” (stretch’s and fold - ~20 minute intervals for ~2.5 hours)
• +4hr bulk ferment at 22°C
• +30hr (refrigerated) final rise in banneton.

Bake:

• Heavy bottom stainless pan (on parchment)
• Baked at 240°C-220°C (40 minutes total)
• 20 minutes @240°C covered by steel bowl
• Uncovered and baked for 10 minutes.
• Removed from pan (directly onto oven wire rack)
• Turned down to 220°C for 10 minutes

Rested:

• oven off, door cracked open and left to cool for an hour
• served after a 12 hour rest.

Review: Not bad. Great oven spring. Could have better acidity. Crispy crust but a bit too much “chew”. Nice, medium density, open crumb. Extremely low sugar (great for extra crispy toast with Vegemite and grilled cheese).

I've been consistently making the same 5 or so loaves and I'm looking for some new sourdough bread ideas!

The loaves I make on rotation are:

• Plain loaf with a mixture of AP and Bread flours.
• Seeded loaf (Heavy on the caraway seed, poppy seed, black and white sesame seed, flax seed) usually a mixture of 50% bread flour and the other 50% being made up of a mixture of rye, spelt and whole wheat. Mainly seeds just inside the bread but occasionally I'll top the bread with them as well.
• Kalamata Olive loaf. Normally mainly bread flour. I slice the olives in half and toss them in a mixture of dried rosemary, oregano, sage and basil before folding them into the bread.
• Extra Mature Cheddar, Chive and Jalapeño. I shred the cheese so it gets completely incorporated into the bread instead of leaving chunks. This loaf makes AMAZING toasties and melts.
• Toasted Walnut and Cranberry loaf. I'll often mix about 30ml Walnut oil into the dough for some extra nuttiness. I don't make this loaf as often, but it is the bread I will make exclusively around thanksgiving because it makes the BEST leftover sandwiches.

I've tried making bread with a portion of the water replaced with beer but I didn't feel it made enough of a difference in final result to be worth it and the alcohol definitely seemed to inhibit the rise somewhat.

I finally got into the sourdough trend three years later than everyone else, after getting sick of paying $9 for a loaf I actually like from the bakery. But I was weird, I don't really like boules because I mainly use sourdough for toast and sandwiches and want loaves that provided similar size pieces that fit in my toaster. And every loaf-pan recipe I tried came out super-dense. Eventually, I figured out how to make a batard, and a recipe that didn't come out super dense, and I have something I would be content toasting for breakfast every morning.

• Starter: I mostly followed the King Arthur Baking guide, although I modified it based on tips from the /r/sourdough wiki to include ~25% wheat flour to get it to actually rise. I could probably reduce the sizes to waste less flour, but right now I'm at the point where I don't want to mess with something that works.
• Recipe: I mostly followed King Arthur's Naturally Leavened Sourdough Bread recipe, although I made some changes based on the high-altitude guide since my house is over 5000 ft elevation: add 1 tbsp flour, add 1 tbsp water, bake at 475°F for 35 minutes.
• Shaping: I followed the instructions for a batard from this video for Pain De Campagne, although I gave up on trying that recipe after multiple attempts that all had huge tunnels. It seems like something is wrong with how I was proofing it, although I don't know enough to figure out how to fix it. And then I scored it cross-wise instead of length-wise, to try to get it to expand length-wise instead of expanding too wide to fit in my toaster.

And I think it turned out well! Crumb seemed nice, no big tunnels, it fit in my toaster and tasted great with apple butter!

It may not be the greatest loaf of bread in the history of the world, but I made it from scratch, and I like it.

I've tried submerging the top of the loaf in water for a second or two before rolling the wet side in another bowl with the toppings (seeds and flaked oats and the like) and then letting cold proof in the fridge and whilst I do get a lot of the toppings sticking to the loaf after baking, they aren't adhered particularly well and will often fall off when I'm slicing the bread. Any suggestions or tips for improvement

Have made these several times and can vouch for the recipe. So indulgent and delicious. I make a double batch and roll them into balls, freeze on a baking sheet then into a plastic bag with instructions on baking them so that kids & husband have emergency cookies.

I need to get back to making more of these. I took a couple month break from baking sourdough and put Sour-on in the fridge, but he has returned.

I need to get back to making more of these. I took a couple month break from baking sourdough and put Sour-on in the fridge, but he has returned.

Two plain, one everything bagel.l and one hops and grains.

Peanut butter sourdough

475g water

150g starter

200g organic white flour

200g organic whole wheat flour

200g organic spelt flour

200g organic peanut butter

I'll update tomorrow with a tasting and crumb shot.

Hey everyone! I've been baking sourdough for about a half-decade at this point and feel like I've got the basics down. What do you guys do when you want to do something weird with your sourdough? I've heard of adding fruit to a starter, but I don't think that would work because the sugars won't be as freely available for the yeast as in a liquid.

You're welcome to share your sourdough breads here. Give it a bit of a story about how you made it and let's create a community of bread sharing.

Today's loaves have a lovely yellow colour from the included semolina (3.5%) and pea flour (3.5%). They also have 20% wholegrain Einkorn which is a lovely flour to use.