The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

Finally got to try out my new starter!

cfiiman's picture
cfiiman

Finally got to try out my new starter!

The bread is wonderful, the flavor is great and the crumb has nice big holes.  I'm still not sure how I got the crumb that way but I'm thinking that since I just added the liquid starter I created a very wet dough which may have helped.  It was so wet even with a good amount of folding and shaping it still spread way out instead of up, but I was less concerned about the flatness and more just the taste.  I was going to wait until my starter was 2 weeks old but it was doubling so fast and smelled so great I decided to just test it.  It is strange, I always thought I had to go to Panera or a good bakery to get bread that taste like this, who knew I could do it in my own kitchen, is it weird to be proud of a starter lol :)  Here is the loaf:

Mebake's picture
Mebake

Beautiful baby loaf, cfiiman! you ought to be proud.

Once you are hooked on sourdough bread, there is no turning around.

Best wishes,

-Khalid

 

DavidEF's picture
DavidEF

Great Bread, when baked at home, is all the more wonderful! It is truly exciting, you have a right to be proud.

dabrownman's picture
dabrownman

You can never go home again or to Pan-era for that matter :-)  in another couple of weeks when your starter is a little more mature you should try a 72% hydration dough and see how you like it as compared to this one which might have been more wet.  Eventually you will want to get it up to 75% or so with some shaping practice for the best of both in the bread world - spring height, less spread and bigger holes. They all taste great as you have found out!

Fantastic first loaf.  Happy baking

cfiiman's picture
cfiiman

Thanks all, dabrownman, can I ask you a question about wet dough?  I was watching a video on a chef in England and he had really wet, wet dough.  He said that you did not need to add flour (as I always seem to do) to get it to firm up, he said you just have to keep working it for a good 10-15 minutes just folding it over and over, is that right?  I always end up using flour b/c I think it will never get to where I can work with it should I just keep going?  Here is the video I am referring too, guy seems to know what he is doing :)  I started the video where he starts to knead it, the thing is right before he puts it in the oven it is as spread out and flat as mine, then we he takes it out it is a ball with like 5" oven oven spring, it doesn't even look like the same loaf, not sure what I'm doing wrong:

http://youtu.be/skvtsTpA5Bk?t=3m45s