I have been working on my SD starter on and off for over a year now, but only decided to treat it with the respect that it deserves about a month and a half ago.  I began to diligently feed my 100% hydration starter every time that it needed feeding, which was about two to three times a day depending on my ratio of starter to flour and water (tips I got from bwraith's great blog entry).  I really paid attention to it's rise and fall rather than the amount of time it had been sitting on the counter, thanks to advice from ehanner, dmsnyder, and so many others who advocate not being a slave to the clock!  The results were well worth changing my careless ways.  I made the Basic Sourdough Bread from TBBA, which I took to a potluck supper.  People wanted to know, "What bakery around here sells loaves like that?"  It was so nice to see people enjoy the end result of my hard work and research.  Hopefully as my "feel" gets better I won't have to suffer through as many "pancakes" on the way to one great loaf!

Still working on my scoring.

Thank you so much folks at TFL!

Summer

I wonder why the recipes I see for baguette include a preferment, but, in general, not sourdough. Is a sourdough baguette an oxymoron?

After some experimenting, I now make a SD baguette that I think surpasses the flavor of a traditional baguette.

Diane

Hi, newbie here :)

I started my first ever starter three days ago. I've been keeping it in my room and its been bubbling away since. I've been feeding it once a day. It looks fine, doesn't seem to have any mold and quite wet. I was wondering about the smell though. Yesterday it was a pleasant sort of bready smell but today it smells more like cheese or spoiled milk. It's kind of a sickening sort of smell. I was wondering if it was normal for it to be unpleasant at this stage. I tossed about half of it today and fed it as the instructions I'm following say to do.

What should I expect from now on?

I am brand new to this forum and haven't had much time to peruse the site, but do like what I see thus far and am hoping to gain much information as I have time to read and learn.  Hopefully someone is online now and can give me some feedback ASAP.  Previously, I baked the Sourdough Banana Bread someone posted and it was the best banana bread we've ever eaten!  It rose good and had such great flavor!  I'm getting ready to bake more of it, which brings me to this post!   I'm new to using and maintaining Sourdough Starter so there is much I do not know regarding taking care of it.  How do I know my starter is okay to use if I have not fed it recently?  I've "heard" it is important to feed Sourdough Starter at least once or twice the day or night before you are to use it.  I haven't fed my starter for about 3 or 4 days.  Does that mean I shouldn't bake with it today and should instead feed it today and bake tomorrow, or is there a way to tell it is healthy and okay to use today?  I would prefer not to waste ingredients if the starter is not okay to use, thus my question.  Thanks in advance for feedback.

I'm about ready to tackle rye breads made with a sourdough starter, but I have a question.

I've been reading Hamelman's Bread, and he poses two ways to make a rye sourdough starter: one begins with an established starter--presumedly, all white flour; the second way begins by making a rye sourdough starter from scratch. I have an all white sourdough starter I'm happy with, but somehow it seems I might be cheating myself converting, rather than creating a rye starter. Please offer your facts, opinions and comments.

Thanks beforehand,

David G

This is my first post, so before I get into the details, here's a little bit about me. I live in the Pacific Northwest, and I took up breadbaking a few years ago when I moved here from the Southeast. The first breads I made were Challahs, and I got pretty good at making them. I'd make pizza, too, but that doesn't really count. After a while, I decided to start my own sourdough starter earlier this year, and after baking every week (except during Passover when I wasn't supposed to), I was starting to get a little annoyed that my breads wouldn't turn out how I wanted them.

Yesterday afternoon, i decided to do some calculations and create a bread that is about 65% hydration. I also knew that I needed to adjust my flour. I like using Bob's Red Mill because it's local, but it only has about an 11.7% gluten content. I adjusted my flour by adding vital wheat gluten to the the flour I used.

So, here are the results: The holes are just right, the crumb is nice and open, and the crust is nice and crusty (duh - it's a crust, right?!). Here are some pictures, and below the pictures are the instructions.

Evening before bake:

Ingredients:

• 300g Bread flour (13% gluten content)
• 225 grams lukewarm water
• 50g highly active firm starter

1. In a medium-sized ceramic bowl, mix the starter into the water, then add the flour.
2. Mix until even consistency is achieved (a couple minutes)
3. Leave mixture in bowl and cover with plastice wrap.
4. Let sit in kitchen for ~10 hours (overnight)

The Day of the Bake:

Ingredients:

• 450g Bread flour (13% gluten content)
• 262g water
• Starter mixture from previous evening.
• 20g kosher salt
• 30g olive oil

1. Mix flour and water in a large bowl.
2. Separate 50g of starter mixture and store in a jar for a future bake. Add all of the rest of it to the flour and water mixture.
3. Mix just a little bit, then add oil and salt. Mix again until fairly incorperated.
4. Turn out onto a clean surface (no flour or oil)
5. Knead for 10 minutes, until gluten is well-formed.
6. Form the dough into a ball and roll it in a little flour (to prevent it from sticking to the bowl while fermenting).
7. Put the dough in a large ceramic bowl and cover with a damp cloth.]
8. After ~2 hours of fermentation, take the dough out and form it into loaves, The dough probably has not changed much in size at this point.
9. Put semolina flour into two bannetons to prevent loaves from sticking.
10. Place formed loaves in bannetons and let proof for 5 hours (until dough doesn't spring back when poked)
11. While dough is proofing, put baking stone on the second-to-top shelf in oven and heat oven to 550 degrees. Put a metal cookie sheet on the bottom shelf in the oven for steam-creation.
12. Just before baking, lower temperature to 425 degrees.
13. Turn loaves out onto a peel, slash them, and put on bread stone.
14. Pour ~1 cup boiling water into the cake pan to create steam.
15. Bake for 45 minutes, turning loaves at the half-way mark.
16. Cool loaves uncovered on wire racks.

Okay, so that's it. If you try the recipe out, let me know how it goes :-)

-Matt

I'm pretty new to both sourdough baking and TFL, but I was asked for my recipe, so here we go...

This is actually a variation of the Times No-Knead, which I got from Eric at Breadtopia.  However, and here's the "Devil's in the Details" moment, I didn't have what I would call success with that recipe.  So, I knocked the water from 12 to 11 ounces, and changed the way I'm handling the dough and baking, and Voila', good bread!

Glass-Weaver Sourdough

80 grams ripe 100% starter

11 ounces iced water

5 ounces whole wheat bread flour (I'm using Trader Joe's White Whole Wheat)

11 ounces bread flour (I'm using Power Flour by Pendleton Mills -- highly recommended)

1 1/2 tsp. plain salt

Mix until moistened, then knead about 30 strokes by hand in the bowl, spray-oil container, put dough in container, spray-oil top, cover, leave at cool room temp overnight.  In the morning, or perhaps closer to noon, when dough has doubled pat out on a wet cutting board, deflating large bubbles only, and stretch-n-fold, put back in container until doubled again, repeat deflating/stretch-n-fold two more time, for a total of three sets.  Then pat dough out on wet cutting board, stretch-n-fold, ending with the dough in a ball.  Allow to rest a couple minutes while preparing a sheet of parchment with a sprinkling of semolina.  Form the loaf by holding in both hands and tucking the skin under until the top is taut, paying attention to kind of "sealing" the gathering point at the bottom.  Then flip the ball over into the left palm and pull the gathering point up into a kind of "stem" about 2" high.  Give the stem a quarter-turn and then flip the dough ball back to right-side-up and sit it down on the parchment, trying to keep the "stem" in the center-bottom.  This helps the loaf climb higher and spread less.  Put an inverted mixing bowl over the loaf to keep it moist and allow to rise until it springs back slowly from a poke with a wet finger.

In the mean time, when it's about half an hour until baking time, preheat oven to 500 degrees and put water in the steamer.  Yeah, steamer, but more about that later.  When the oven is up to temp, slash loaf, use a peel to put the loaf, parchment and all, onto Fibrament baking stone, cover with terracotta pot and inject 5 seconds of steam, cover hole in pot.  Reduce temperature to 450 degrees, bake 15 minutes, remove pot, bake 15 more minutes.  Pull out with peel, invert loaf into pot-holder-protected palm and pull parchment off bottom, cool on rack.

I got the idea for using the steamer and pot from several different threads here on TFL, and put together my own version.  It so happened I already have a steamer, intended for either steam-cleaning or for pressing clothes ($129 from Costco, a whole bucket of attachments, used it twice, grrr.)  As you can imagine I was thrilled to have a use for the steamer, so I worked hard at making a home-made "cloche".  The pot was easy, but I wanted a way to handle it without getting burned, and I wanted to be able to inject steam, trap the steam and divert the steam off the raw dough.  The handle I came up with is made from 1/16" TIG welding rod (which is stainless steel) and two food can tops removed with a side-cutting can opener, and some nuts and bolts.  Hopefully you can see from the photos how I did it.  Oh, the most expensive part of the project was buying a drill bit for tile (about $9.00).  The cover for the hole just sits loose on top and is shifted to open and closed positions with a potholder.  Seems to work fine.

I know some people are nervous about using pots that aren't intended for food, but the pot never touches the bread, and lead, which is what I think people are worried about, is used in glazes, not the clay itself, as far as I know.

The handle was made by wrapping the piece of welding rod around a 1/4" steel tube (I needed help for this, hard to hold onto), a loop was formed in each end to go around the bolt.  Then, a curved piece of rod was passed through the spiral and cut off, more loops in the ends were formed (crudely, with pliers.)  It was a struggle to get everything lined up between the washers and get the bolts tightened down, but I did it myself.

The "diverter", which is a can top, is about 3/4" below the hole in the pot.  This allows the steam to enter, but not hit the dough directly.  The space between the pot and the diverter is maintained with nuts and lock washers on the long bolts.

The steam makes a lovely shining crust, chewy and crisp.  I knocked down the water to 11 ounces because I wanted smaller holes in the crumb.  (I know, that's not what lots of people here are after, but I like the sandwich fillings to stay in the middle!) 

You'll notice that everything I've mentioned was learned and gathered from posts here on TFL.  Thanks to all the great bakers who are so happy to teach and share.  So far, this bread is my one-note tune, but I hope to be expanding my repertoire soon.

Terri (Glass-Weaver)

Folliwing Dan DiMuzio's guidance (and others) re creating a more sour levain I prepared a 500g, 50% hydration levain, and then fed it every 12 hours for two and a half days. I maintained it at 55°F, in our wine closet, thoroughout. Subsequently, I used DiMuzio's Pain au Levain (firm starter: 480g, 60%) formula with two changes. 1. The aforementioned 50% hydrated levain vs. the formula's 60% levain; and, 2. I encreased the whole-wheat flour percentage to 20% vs. the formula's 10%. Yes, I knew the increased whole wheat flour content would alter the flavor, but I reasoned the whole-wheat alteration wouldn't effect the sour component of the finished bread. My objectives were threefold. Maintain the same excellent ovenspring with the stiffer levain as I've been experiencing with the 60% hydrated levain. Increase the perceived sourness in the flavor profile. Finally, I wanted to practice batard shaping and scoring, a shape I haven't made very often. Except for the batard shaping, as nearly as possible, I replicated all the mixing, bulk fementation, final proof, and baking steps I've used before baking the basic formula.

Just for fun, while the stiff levain was fermenting after its final feeding, I used the 250g of levain that would otherwise been discarded to make a single, all white flower batard.

The results of both bakes are shown in the photos.

As hoped for, the pain au levain is distinctively sour, but not to the extent of many of the commercial San Francisco sourdoughs I've tasted. The ovenspring was preserved, and I'm satisfied with my batard shaping and scoring.

The leftover starter loaf.

and its crumb--closed more than usual.

David G

So I shaped a sourdough boule last night and put it in the refrigerator. This morning when I took it out, this is what I saw:

Any idea why I might have gotten that blowout on the left side? I shaped carefully with good surface tension. Could I have let it bulk ferment too long (~9 hours) before shaping?

This bread is fast becoming a favorite with us.

I won't have a crumb shot for these, because they are both marked for neighborhood dinner parties. Although I've not been disappointed in past bakes,I got more ovenspiring with these two loaves, baked individually, then ever before. The past three times I've baked this formula I've retarded the dough overnight. This time I scheduled the formula-ready levain to peak early in the morning, and proceeded from there to make the dough, autolyse, bulk ferment, shape, and proof. I proofed the left-hand loaf at room temperature, and retarded the final proof of the right hand loaf at 55*F. I did this only to bake the loaves individually. They are different weights (left:750g, right:1000g). I like to use a different temperature schedule for the each: 480*F for 10 mins. with steam for both; finish baking the smaller at 450*F, and the larger at 440*F. Both loaves had excellent oven spring, but the smaller, room temperature proofed loaf had the most.

David G