The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

Challah Back's blog

Challah Back's picture
Challah Back

I've been playing with bwraith's no-knead sourdough formula and tried to adjust it for the vagaries of October in Wisconsin.  I've landed on what seems to be a fine method (for October in Wisconsin).  

 

With apologies to bwraith, whose baker blog I've been stalking, here's the formula I used:

 

50 g 100% hydration starter

320 g water

450 g flour (roughly 10% rye, 45% each AP and Dakota Maid bread flour)

9 g salt

 

I mixed Thursday night and let it bulk ferment until Friday morning, probably about eight hours.  I stretched and folded twice before bed and once in the morning at no set interval.  After stretching and folding Friday morning I put it into the refrigerator.  Returning home after work (ten hours later) I took it out of the fridge, de-chilled, and formed into one boule and one (sort of) batard.  A boule-tard.  When I was about to pre-heat, my lovely missus suggested going out for dinner.  Back into the fridge it all went.  

 

Saturday morning, I preheated, slashed, and baked at about 500F on a pizza stone, under an upturned and preheated cast iron dutch oven.  That's it.  On a whim I grabbed a maple leaf for a try at stenciling.  That became the gift loaf.  The other was the workaday loaf that we're still enjoying.  The flavor is great: chewy crust, springy crumb, ever-so-slight tang.  Oven spring was out of control - - maybe more proofing time instead of just popping from the fridge into the oven?

 

 

 

Challah Back's picture
Challah Back

Well . . . I'm new here.  Started baking about two years ago when I shaped some leftover pizza dough into a breadstick-sized baguette and never looked back.  Got into sourdough this past summer when a friend gave me a starter that had been given to her father, a dentist in Bend, Oregon, in lieu of payment for dental work, back in 1963.  Here are some English muffins the little guy helped raise.  Adapted from this formula at Wild Yeast, using white whole wheat flour.  I guess that doesn't really make it "adapted," huh?  Anyway, I'd been using a whole wheat starter and adjusting the formula to a 50-50 mix of bread and AP flour.  I like it better than the original, but the white whole wheat flour substitution is pretty sexy, too.

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