Bread - What are you baking today…..
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Today I followed a Sarah Owens (author of 'Sourdough - recipes for rustic fermented bread' '). She has a great 30 min video on YouTube.
Recipe:
60g starter
300g water
310g white bread fl
80g wholewheat stoneground fl
8g salt30 mins autolyse
3 hr bulk ferment, folding every 30 minsAll I was left with is the same sticky, wet, unshapeable mess that I had with a different recipe last week.
My starter doubles in size after feeding, passes the float test, and smells great…this is the result. I can only put the issue now down to ambient temperature or type of flour.
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That baking with your own Levain is of course a cool hipster thing and sometimes I really had nice results mostly with wholemeal bread…. but I am with Giles and I don’t have the time and patience to cultivate the Levain permanently... I switched to prefermented doughs... more predictable results
Another 80% Biga + Giles 8 Grain
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So a bit of success at last. Today's bake had a four hour bulk ferment and a seven hour fridge proof. A possibly meaningful factor was that my starter was made 11 hours before it went into the flour and was fermented in my warm cupboard. The routine for the last few bakes has been to make it late the night before and use it 18 hours later. It sat on the kitchen bench though where it is cooler. I suspect it was more burnt out than it should have been.
The results in terms of crumb and taste were the same, the volume increase during the fridge proof were limited, but the oven spring and firmness of the dough between the fridge and the oven were much, much better. The final loaves were higher and ended in a better shape.
At this point it's about aesthetics, but I'm pleased to have learnt a little more about the practical dynamics involved.
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Looks great @neph93 ^^
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I really wish you s.o.b.'s would stop posting photos of stuff I'm too lazy to bake myself.
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A bit more success on Sunday, spelt, rye, and white. It was delicious. I didn't expect as much oven spring. @neph93 the slashes were made using my Spyderco UKPK, not a lame… Just to show how razor sharp they are
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Well done @Stuart.T that is coming along nicely. Exciting application of your pocket knife too [emoji1]
I’m increasingly aware of the role the composition of levains play in oven spring and timing. Knowing your starter and the resulting levain seems important for predicting results.
Breads made with my rye starter almost always do well, but my spelt starter acts in a very different way and the timings need to be different. Also the levain I make from my spelt starter gives different results depending on whether I use wholemeal spelt to feed it or finely milled spelt. The former takes more time to ripen and allows for longer fermenting and proofing, while the latter seems much more volatile and peaks earlier.
