SUSAN'S SIMPLE SOURDOUGH CHALLENGE - TAKE TWO

On October 4th, ehanner's blog presented Susan's Simple Small Sourdough Challenge. Eric's challenge was simple - make Susan's bread and report back. My first attempt at Susan's bread was posted to Susan's Simple Sourdough Challenge - Take One on November 7, 2009. I was so enthralled with her bread I made it a second time a few days later.

Susan's basic recipe and method can be found on her blog post of April 17, 2008. I would also recommend you check out Susan's Blog for variations and lots of great photos of her bread.

The ingredients are straightforward: sourdough starter, unbleached bread flour (either regular or high gluten), whole grain flour, water and salt. Dough hydration is 70%.

What really makes this bread special is her method (minimal kneading and periodic stretch-and-folds, a long bulk fermentation and, after shaping, an overnight proof in the refrigerator). The only change I made to her method was to add a one hour autolyse at the very beginning (combine all the flour and water, roughly mix and let rest, covered, at room temperature, for one hour). After the autolyse, the starter and salt were mixed in and from that point I followed her instructions.

The dough can be shaped as a boule or a batard. Susan usually shapes it as a boule and covers the dough with a heat-proof metal bowl for the first 15 minutes of the bake. (If shaped as a batard, she suggests using the lid of a turkey roaster). Covered baking eliminates the need to steam the oven and results in great oven spring.

For this trial, I used my 100% hydration sourdough starter, unbleached bread flour, rye flour (home milled), ordinary tap water and sea salt. I shaped the dough as a batard (I prefer this shape) and used the bottom of an enameled metal turkey roaster as the cover.

This is a wonderful bread. A nice sourdough flavor, open crumb, crispy crust. Here are photos...

Kneaded Dough Ready for Bulk Ferment

My Rising Container - a plastic basket lined with a cotton tea towel rubbed with rice flour

Risen Dough Ready to be Baked.

On the Peel (a cookie sheet) and Slashed

Cooling After the Bake

Crumb (photo is a little blurry - sorry!)

Hello all! I've been lurking here for quite sometime. I'm fairly new to all this bread making 'obsession'. I say obsession because six months ago I went from buying a used bread machine to giving it way and buying my first heavy duty stand mixer and baking bread everyday! 

I've hesitated jumping in and asking yet 'another' sourdough question for fear of sounding redundant. But I've searched everywhere for the answer to this question and I still do not see it.

I got me one of those San Francisco sourdough starter kits a while back and it did exactly what it was suppose to do, I made a couple of very good loafs with that starter. However, being the uneducated bread baker wanna be that I am. I successfully killed it.

Wanting to try one more time at the sourdough starter, I purchased another starter. It is doing what the first did with the bubbling and aroma, but not the rise. It looks good, smells good but even the cup that I remove produced a dead glob of dough. How can it look good in the jar, with the bubbles and looking all spongy but produces nothing? 

I hope someone can help me, thank you in advance for you time. I have learned so much and I'm sure now that I've broken the ice you will see much more of me. Sorry for the long windiness of this post.

Virginia

I started baking bread a few months ago and have had good results from Reinhart's BBA forumlas so far (mainly French and Italian breads). A few weeks ago, I decided to venture into sourdough. I tried making the Basic Sourdough from BBA. Everything turned out tastey, but I don't think the dough rose as much as it should have (it also took about 8 or 9 hours). I decided this was because my "barm" (as Reinhart calls it) was new.

This weekend, I decided I would try again. On Thursday night, I fed my "barm" and on Friday I constructed the firm starter. The amount of firm starter seems very small to me (~50% or 4 oz compared to other recipes in the book which have way over 100% biga or pâte fermentée). Both times, with the starter, I have had trouble seeing a rise after 4-6 hours because it also spreads out across the bottom of the bowl. I'm hoping this time the final dough will rise more, but first I just wanted to check that my method is correct and see if anyone can offer me some tips. Sourdough takes so much time compared to other breads so its even more annoying when something doesn't work out!