Over the last month or so I have been chasing the elusive yeast water open crumb.   I was working under the theory that one could replace a regular poolish with a combination of yeast water and flour and then bake as usual.   This ran into some technical problems - namely aggressive protease action.   In trying to figure out how to respond to this, I came upon the following enlightening sentence in Hamelman: "Protease is an enzyme whose function is to denature protein, and in a loose mixture like poolish, protease activity is relatively high."  I think this means that protease is generated by yeast as it tries to digest (i.e. denature) the proteins in flour and that in a poolish environment at 100% hydration and with an unknown quantity of yeast in my yeast water  that I was overdoing it.   This time, I pulled back on the amount of yeast water and the hydration of the poolish but not on the hydration of the bread.    The result was much better.  

I have still not got the cuts to open as I would like, but I am quite happy with the flavor which has a lot of depth and somewhat happy with the crumb.   Suggestions for improvements are most welcome.

Formula:

Method:

Mix yeast water and flour night before.   Leave on counter for 12 hours.   Add flour and water for final dough and mix to develop dough.   Autolyze 1/2 hour.   Mix in salt and mix again.   Ferment for 30 minutes, then stretch and fold in the bowl.   After 30 minutes stretch and fold on the counter.   Gather dough together and do a loose shaping.   Do a third stretch and fold after 30 minutes and another shaping.   Let ferment for 30 more minutes.   Cut in half and preshape.    Rest for 20 minutes.   Shape into batards and place in couche.   Proof for just over an hour.   Bake for 20 minutes at 450 with steam, 25 minutes without. 

A few notes about this.   The dough was quite liquidy until the first counter stretch and fold when it came together pretty nicely.   This was despite two 3 minute mixes in a kitchenaid at progressively increasing speeds.   It was difficult to slash because it was quite sticky and the blade got caught.   

I'm in the middle of my very first SD bake.  I'm using Hamelman's Vermont Sourdough recipe, which uses a levain.  I grew my levain for 7 days (he says in the book that it should be ready to use on day 6).  The thing is, I didn't really see much rise in the bulk ferment stage.  There was a change in the dough structure, but very little growth (2.5 hours with 1 fold).  My shaped loaves have been sitting for 2.5 hours and though smooth and elastic looking...still not much growth.  The oven is heating right now...if I don't see miraculous oven spring, these are going to  be really small heavy loaves.  Maybe my levain didn't grow for long enough....too soon to start guessing until they come out of the oven.  Needless to say, I'm on pins and needles until these babies go in the oven.  More to come....

sue

Update: geez, it looks like I will have 3 pounds of flatbread.  What happened?  Levain not mature enough?  It had bubbles and a delightful smell, sort of like yogurt.  I have it (my levain) in the fridge now, I can continue to feed it 2x a day (at room temp) for another week...is that a good strategy?  I'm a bit bummed. 

Hi after having made several straight dough bread, I would like to try a levain based recipe.

I am looking for a method (recipe) on how to prepare levain. I am also looking for some readings on the subject.

Thank you,

I am looking for a soudough sandwich loaf formula.  I really like the white sandwich loaf I make now, but would like to add some starter to it.  So does anyone have a white sourdough sandwich recipe?  Or can anyone tell me how to convert the formula I have now for sourdough.  I maintain a 100% hydration starter.  The recipe I use now is something like this:

5 1/3 c water

1/2 c sugar

1/2 c fat

1 c nonfat milk

5 t salt

2 T yeast

16 c flour

I use all kinds of stuff in the 16 c flour.  This makes 4 loaves.  So what do you think?

Started a new starter from scratch last weekend.  Followed Mike's porcess from www.sourdoughhome.com.  Used rye flour for a couple of days and then switched to unbleached flour.  Made a "quick" recipe yesterday -- lots of starter and only a 2 hour rise.  That disappeared in a hurry.  Today  I got up early and made another batch using much less starter and a longert rise.  I let it bulk rise for 6 hours and then formed the loaves (~1LB each) and let them rise another 3 hours.  Here are the results:  I know I have to work on my docking....).

my first sourdough bread using 5 days old starter raised in sunny Queensland, Australia

I am new to sourdough berad.  A big thank-you to Susan of wild yeast.  I followed her Overnight Ciabatta recipe loosely.  But as someone said, "it isn't the recipe that will make or break...so much as the technique used in dealing with the ingredients," it really isn't easy for a beginner especially when the ingredients are so simple - flour, water and a few microorganisms in the air.  As you can see from the top picture, the bottom of my bread is dense.  I was quite scared when I was folding the dough and as a result I probably didn't do as good a job in that.  Another reason for the dense bottom crumb could be that it didn't proof completely before it went into the bake.   It is very hard for a beginner to judge - the recipe might say, "proof one hour", how about my room temp, how well did the dough ferment before that... all of these play a mystical part in the final product unbeknown to the beginner.

And, thank-you, too, to cleancarpetman.  I read his "Freedom!!" before I finally decided I should put all the books and reseach aside and just do it.  One day I will get the ryhthm of the process. 

The flavour of the bread was beautiful though - mildly sour, soft, and full of life.  It has the complexity in flavour that factory white bread cannot dream of.  Both of my son and daughter loved it.  How do a 14 year-old and a 16 year-old know these things. 

Shiao-Ping

So i posted about a month ago about my sourdough being too acidic and turning into yuck.  The dough got really stringy and never rose.  So I threw it away and started over.  I followed the SOurdough 101 tutorial.  After about a week I had a starter that was doubling ever 4-6 hrs.  So I thought I was in business.  So I used the Sourdough recipe from KA.

1 c feed starter mixed with 1 1/2 c water, 3 c ap flour.  Let rise 4 hrs then retard in fridge over night.

Add 2 c flour, 1 T sugar, 2 1/4 t salt.  Knead, let rise 2-4 hrs. and so on.

So I followed the first part and the starter doubled in 4 hrs.  Then I put it in the fridge overnight.  This morning I mixed the dough and let it rise.  After 3 + hrs the dough had done nothing!!!!!  I mean nothing.  The night before it was all bubbly and everything.  So I tried to salvage the bread.  I spread it out like you would fold it and added 1 1/2 t yeast.  Then kneaded.  I let is rise for another and and got about a 60% increase.  At this point I was frustrated and needed to bake because of other daily interferences.  I but it in boule shapes and let rest another 1 20 min.  Then baked it.  This is what I got.

So needless to say I am about to give up on the sourdough.  The only reason I got the rise I did was because I added yeast after 3 hrs of trying to ferment the dough.  Why will my starter double but not the dough?  HELP!!!!

I have recently started baking sourdough bread, and have thoroughly enjoyed the process.  Each loaf has been a "success", but each loaf has been very different from the others.  My wife and I have very different opinions about whether or not a loaf is a success.  For me, the crust should be a beautiful brown, and very crispy/chewy.  The crumb should be open, with some large, irregular holes.  My wife, on the other hand, prefers a bread with a golden colored, soft, delicate crust, and a finer crumb.

I have been able to achieve the bread I prefer by baking boules in a cast iron pot.  My wife's favorite loaves were achieved by baking batards on a pizza stone (although I was honestly trying to bake bread the way I really like it!).  I have posted about a couple of my previous loaves on TFL, and a number of you have responded with comments and suggestions about each loaf.  One suggestion that was made more than once was retarding the dough after shaping.  So this time, I decided to give retarding in the refrigerator a try.  Of course, I was hoping to end up with a loaf with crisp crust and a really open crumb.

I used Mike Avery's basic mild sourdough recipe again, only modifying it by adding a tablespoon of Bob's Red Mill vital gluten, as the organic AP flour I get from my local co-op is lower in protein than the KA flour I was previously using.  Lacking proper bannetons, I used a couple ceramic bowls from the china cabinet.  They measured 5 1/2 inches in diameter by 2 1/2 inches deep.  The dough had been kneaded a bit in my Kitchen Aid mixer, then stretched and folded three times at 45-minute intervals, and finally formed into round balls and placed in the ceramic bowls. The shaped dough was put into a cold refrigerator (actual temp unknown, but a lot of things freeze in the darned thing) overnight. Total retard time was about 12 hours.

On removal from the fridge, the loaves were nearly completely risen. They had risen enough that the portion above the bowl was at least as large as the portion in the bowl.  Rather than chance disaster by removing them from the bowls to bake, I opted to bake them as "pan" breads.  Fortunately, I had buttered the bowls, rather than lining them with floured cloth, so I was able to just pop them in the oven after a 2-hour warm-up period and scoring them.  I spritzed them with water and placed them in a 375 degree farenheit oven directly on a baking stone for about 45 minutes.  At that time, they were golden in color, but sounded hollow and had an internal temperature of 202 degrees. They were removed from the ceramic bowls and placed on cooling racks.

The results were somewhat surprising, although maybe they shouldn't hve been.  The upper sections (above the bowls) had crunchy, chewy crust.  The lower sections (baked in the bowls) had soft crusts.  The crumb was light and open, moist but not wet, and the flavor was less subtle than previous loaves, with a more pronounced sourdough flavor.

Overall, this baking was a "success" for both of us.  My wife had her soft crust, and I had my crisp and chewy crust.  The crumb didn't have big, irregular holes, but it was open and delicate.  Retarding the final dough paid off in flavor, but the baking method undoubtedly affected the crumb and crust. Overall, though, I'm certain that more bread will be baked this way in our house.

Feel free to weigh in with comments and suggestions.

A few days ago, I posted about the success my first sourdough loaf, and the fact that I am now totally hooked. I baked a second loaf today, and I am both ecstatic and disappointed by the results. Ambivalent feelings aside, the bread tasted great, and the crust was that delightfully crunchy-yet-chewy texture I was looking for. The crumb was moist and delicate, but there were no large and irregular holes that I would like to have seen. The flavor was mildly sourdough (as expected), and the oven spring was amazing.

The scoring, however, didn't go as smoothly as I had hoped. My knife, although extremely sharp, dragged through the dough rather than slicing smoothly as it did on the first loaf. The dragging knife deflated one side of the loaf a bit, but I baked it anyway.  It was a very pleasant surprise when the loaf turned out so well.  I believe part of the problem may have been the slightly increased "stickiness" of the surface of the second loaf, as compared to the first.

For this second loaf, I used the "Mild" San Francisco Sourdough Bread recipe from chapter 4 of Mike Avery's "An Introduction To Sourdough Baking" (free sample). The recipe is:

* 2 cups starter (mine is approximately 166% hydration - equal amounts by volume)
* .5 cup whole wheat flower
* 2.5 cups white bread flower
* 1/4 cup water
* .5 tsp salt

Because of shoulder pain, I couldn't perform the manual kneading called for in the recipe, so I mixed and kneaded the ingredients in my Kitchen Aid stand mixer for about 4 - 5 minutes - just long enough to develop a minimal amount of gluten. I then put it into an olive oil coated bowl and used the "stretch and fold" method. I folded the dough at 45-minute intervals 3 times, then after a 45-minute rest I placed it in a 10-inch skillet on an oiled parchement paper to rise for 2 hours. The loaf was baked in a pre-heated cast iron dutch oven at 450 degrees with the lid on for 30 minutes, then uncovered for 15 minutes. At that time, the loaf was nicely browned and the internal temperature was 204 degrees farenheit. It had raised much more than I had expected. After cooling, the weight was just under 2 pounds. The recipe was for two 1-pound loaves, but I opted to bake it as a single loaf.

Here are the pictures of the finished loaf, as well as the cast iron pot used as a cloche, and the nice red wine that kept me company while the bread was "working". Your comments are welcome, and yes, I know that many of you only use weight for measurement, but Mike's recipe looked good and was only avaiable as volumetric.

Sourdough- The crumb was to dense, don't know what I did wrong.