"Spent Fuel"

I had a bit of levain left from my experiment with a Forkish loaf and I hate to throw it away.  I kept it on the counter feeding it a bit each day until Thursday when I said "that's it".  I followed gsnyde's San Francisco country loaf (found at this link http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/25402/sf-country-sourdough-%E2%80%93-my-best-ever%E2%80%A6not-sure-why), adjusting the formula to accommodate my 143 g of levain because you can't throw it out darn it.  Anyway thank you gsnyde.  It is one of my best loaves ever.  It has a nice crisp crust, a tangy and nutty full flavor, and is one of the lightest sd's I have produced to date.  I proved seamside down in the banneton and then baked seamside up and let the loaf make it's own path in the spring.  I even stuck the proved loaf in the banneton in to the freezer for 7-8 minutes before placing it in my Lodge cast iron DO.   I am quite happy with how my "spent fuel" regenerated  itself.

I have a couple of things I'm concentrating on  - shaping and less flour in my banneton.  "Work in progress" would be the operative term. Critiques would be most welcome.  I baked the loaf earlier than I might have other times (on purpose).  I felt I had the appropriate poke with this even though I often wait for more volume (a mistake oftentimes).  I also think I handle the dough too much when shaping and maybe force too much gas out of it.  Of course by the time I realize I'm doing that it's too late.  As stated I'd appreciate thoughts on that.  I think the bake times are good usually.  This one in particular has a lovely gelatin-like crumb.  The flour combo helps that I think - 83% AP, 11% WW and 6% rye.  The bottom crust is good - not thick or hard to chew and not too dark.

I had a piece for toast this morning.  And as I was contemplating the various aspects - flavor, crumb etc. I thought " oh I should have put some fennel or anise or caraway or all three".  Needless to say I have already taken another 10 g of starter out of my stock and have started building another levain.  I'm telling you it's a disease! This natural levain baking is a sickness.  I'm not that interested in yeast although from time to time it's what is called for.  It's the satisfaction of knowing that you really really did this from scratch I think with sd.  How much more basic does it get - flour, water, salt?

Finally, I would like to tell you that I started to post this at 6:00 am this morning. I have done a few other chores.  However in my wonderfully simplified life with all my electronic gadgets and all my different email addresses, I found that posting to the blog to be not quite as easy as I had anticipated today.  Once I had worked my way through the fact that my iPhone was kind of full (it's ONLY 16GB!), I found I had at some point backed up my iPhone to iTunes on a Windows laptop and wouldn't you know it - I needed the password to back it up all over again.  After some searching in my standard locations, I found that old password.  Who knew you needed the same password to back up again.  I mean I could see you would need it for restoring but can't I have a new password for backing up? Please?  I then found I had rotated photos. The good news was that I still had photos - somewhere.  That was next - rotate the photos.  And then the post...

And finally here I am - I finally got it done!

Happy Weekend all!