I made a French bread size loaf from a sourdough baguette recipe. It's a recipe I got in a sourdough class that I make regularly but usually in typical baguette form. It has about 50grams of starter and 2 gram sof commercial yeast for a 900 gram total dough. We are having roast beef melt sandwiches for dinner so I made some larger loaves than normal. I did everything I thought would decrease oven spring. I used a lower oven temperature, bulk and proofed longer than normal and held my lame completely vertical. Between Charlotte and the commerical yest, the end result was among the best oven spring I have had in a loaf. Not sure how it happened but will have to keep experimenting and learning. Bread baking is so complex.
I've been lurking for a while and this is my first blog post. Thanks for everyone for making this site great. I am an amateur and have been baking bread for a couple years. My daughters and I made a sourdough starter named Charlotte early on. I keep her on the counter and we feed her mostly everyday and she has been refrigerated once or twice for short periods. She goes on trips with us as well. She lives in Mississippi and has vacationed Tennessee, Missouri, Indiana and Illinois.
This was an adaptation from a Rye Flaxseed formula in Hamelman's Bread. I didn't use commercial yeast and added some sunflower seeds.
I used Hodgson Mill Rye flour and Sam's Club bread flour. I did a bulk ferment for 2.5 hours followed by one hour proof in cotton lined bannetons. This is shorter than my typical sourdough proof but they loaves looked good to go. I attributed to the significant percentage of overall flour in the levain. Shaping was difficult as Rye is very sticky to work with. Scoring went better than the last time so I felt ok with taking pictures of the finished product.
Taste-wise the family loved it. Even the two young ones who generally scoff at anything not white bread.
