bblearner's blog

I followed the 2nd recipe on davidg618's post "Adjusting Sourdough Starter" which allows a pure sourdough baked bread to be finished within 6 hours.  This is the first time that I could bake a sourdough bread with some height.  All my past ones were flat because they spreaded sideways once they were released from the form they were final-proofing in.  Also, the colour of the crumb is no longer greyish. 

Here is how it looks like

A big 'thank you' to davidg618.

Enid

My first try to use a starter to bake a sourdough bread was Mountaindog's Cherry Pecan Pain au Levain which was so dense and almost unedible.  I was sure something was not right with my starter.  So I requested MD post some pictures of his levains for me for guidance, which he did with nice illustrations.  I followed that to feed my starter for over a week and tried to build a levain with bubbles that would match those of MD's and finally I thought my starter was ripe enough to make breads, I tried the Country French Bread (Thom Leonard's), also from MD's blog :

The crumb was still a little dense because I overlooked the part on folding.  So a week later I had another try and followed the recipe as closely as possible and this was a better one :

I was so happy that my starter finally is working and the following one is Richard Bertinet's sourdough bread with a small touch of spelt flour :

Honestly, I like the flavour of the Country French Bread more.  My next exercise will be the Pecan Cranberry Pain au Levain, again. 

I would like to thank everybody on this site for their generosity of sharing techniques, experiences, recipes, etc. and a special thanks to Mountaindog's encouragement!