I've been baking sourdough since Fall 2010. For the last week, I've made 5 loaves of sourdough bread, just trying to get an acceptable-looking loaf for my mushroom club's upcoming mushroom dinner. Until now, I've been satisfied with my pathetic loaves, because I think they're as healthy or more as any loaf of bread, and they taste sour, which is what I want, and they're a perfect vehicle for butter and liver pate (which I include liberally in my diet).

But now I'm making this loaf for my club members, and I'm afraid that my loaves may embarass me.

I'm really "free-style" with my sourdough baking, and although I find the techniques and science fascinating, so far I don't feel it necessary to follow instructions too closely. So.... I want to improve the quality of my loaves (drastically), but I'm not yet striving for what most would consider "perfection," and I'm not about to make my bread-baking complicated.

I'm loosely following the recipe entitled "Sourdough" on pg. 115 of "The River Cottage Bread Handbook" by Daniel Stevens. I change it just about every time, and so this is one reason for my creating this account - I'm going to start (seriously) recording each experience I have with my sourdough career.

Here's my basic recipe:

Sponge: Made in the evening, let ferment overnight, covered with a plastic garbage bag, left at about 65-70 degrees F.

• 1/2 c. whole rye starter
• 2 c. whole spelt
• 1 1/4 c. water

Dough: Next morning.

• 1 c. whole spelt
• 1 c. unbleached, all-purpose wheat with germ
• 1/2 c. whole buckwheat

Procedure: Varies ;).

Almost every time I bake my bread, in the oven it cracks at the sides of the base. (In this photo, it's not too bad actually).

Google searches tell me that this is a sign of underproofing. I let it rise for a good 5 hours, sometimes more though when it doesn't seem to rise. When I put it by the woodstove, then it does rise, gets very airy and a little melty. (I oil the bowl and dough). But then it really spreads out on the pan. And once I tried re-kneading it and shaping it, several times, and that didn't seem to help. Here are some more pictures:

(I intentionally tore that piece off - not an issue with baking!)

Now, this time, with my mushroom loaf, I didn't get the side-splits. I think that's because I put a lot of flour on the dough before I let it rise (which, I'm not sure if it really did - it went about 3 hours) and it developed a bit of a skin. Then, that skin cracked on the top a little as it rose (horizontally, mostly) and so although the cracking didn't look so great when it baked because I also slashed it, it didn't crack on the sides, I'm guessing because of the skin. But this loaf also had little to no oven spring, perhaps also because of the skin.

So although I'm so sick of making bread right now, I'm trying again... but this is the last time before the mushroom dinner tomorrow, I promise myself. I'm changing the recipe again though. Instead of 1 c. whole spelt and 1 c. all-purpose, I'm adding 2 c. all purpose to the dough.

Now I'm letting the dough autolyze for 45 minutes to an hour, depending on when I finish this entry ;).

My prediction of the procedure for this batch:

• Knead for 2 minutes or so, adding in chopped shiitake and porcini mushrooms
• Stretch & fold every 30 minutes, for ? hours (this will be the bulk fermentation)
• Form dough into a boule. Flour just the bottom and sides, to create a skin to prevent the side cracking. I won't flour the top to allow it to rise without the top cracking. Let rise in bowl for 3 (?) hours at 65-70 degrees F. (Should I put it downstairs, where the woodstove is? I did that I couple of times previously, but it kind of melts my dough... I think I won't put it downstairs, and continue with a slower, longer fermentation instead)
• Put dough on baking sheet, re-shape into boule, slash + on top, with |  between each right angle of +, kind of nearing the base to allow some expansion at the bottom and hopefully prevent side-slitting where I definitely don't want it. Mist the slashes. Bake at 500 for 10 minutes, then 30 minutes at 400.

It's week 6 in the Inside the Jewish Bakery Challenge - Semester 1. This week is Polish Potato Bread.

By procrastinating my bake until the end of the week, I can learn from the experience of those who have their act together and baked earlier! A common theme seemed to be "dough too wet," so I was meticulous about my measuring. The biggest opportunity for adding moisture seems to be during the process of boiling the potatoes. I weighed them prior to boiling, and again after draining, and they had gained a half-ounce. I reduced the potato water in the recipe accordingly.

For the flour, I milled hard red wheat and sifted it to ~80% extraction through a #30 sieve.

As you can see, the dough was still wet, but it wasn’t the batter that some folks have gotten. I was able to more-or-less wrangle it into a shape with well-floured hands.

I would change the following things next time I made it:

First, I would allow the proof to continue until the loaf was higher than the top of the pan. Like many others, I got no oven spring at all. I had gotten such a vigorous rise in the fermentation, I think I could have easily gotten another inch during the proof.

Second, I got burned (almost literally) by putting the pans into the top third of the oven rack. The tops were starting to get really dark at the 40 minute mark, so I pulled the pans. I left the bread in the pan for 15 minutes, then moved to a cooling rack. The bottoms were very undercooked. If you look at the bottom of the slices in the last picture, you see no crust at all. Next time, I’ll put them lower in the oven, and tent with foil if necessary to get a longer bake.

And there will certainly be a next time. The bread is unbelievably soft – the softest milled wheat bread I’ve made. I made potato soup to go with it, and they paired perfectly. I would imagine I’ll make this every time I make potato soup in the future – I’m already boiling them, it’s really easy to add a couple extra for the bread.

Hi All! First post here, just making my way into bread geekery but loving it so far!

After having some good success with white breads (enriched and lean), dinner rolls and cinnamon rolls lately, I decided to try my hand at whole wheat. My first attempt - Reinhart's recipe from The Bread Baker's Apprentice - fell flat. I was using old flour and my pre-ferments didn't look anything like Peter's descriptions. Then, this past weekend, I bought some freshly-milled red winter wheat flour at a farmers' market, and got the farmer's recipe for the (delicious!) bread he was sampling there. (With apologies for the volumetric flour measurements - he didn't give me weights, so I spooned the flour into measuring cups and leveled...)

1.5c Red Winter Wheat flour
1.5c All-purpose flour (I used bread flour)
1.5t Yeast
1.5T Butter
3T Sugar
1.5t Salt
0.5c Water
0.5c Milk 

I tried baking a loaf yesterday. Starting with room-temp ingredients, the dough came together nicely, (sorta-kinda) passed the windowpane test after about 15 minutes of mechanical kneading, and registered 80°F. My kitchen's ambient stays at a pretty constant 70°F, which puts most of the Apprentice recipes right on-the-mark for fermentation times. But this took over 3 hours to double in size. I shaped it for a sandwich loaf and proofed in a glass loaf pan; after 4 hours it had barely moved! Finally, since I had the oven on to roast our dinner anyway, I moved it to the stovetop hoping the heat from the oven vent would speed things up. After another 2 hours, it had finally risen above the top of the pan. All told, total fermentation time was around 9 hours!

I ended up baking it at 400°F for about 25 minutes, with a turn at 15 minutes, and it registered 185°F when done. Surprisingly, it came out quite good - no "beery" flavor as I expected, nice malt flavor, just a hint of bitterness, overall very tasty!

So - is this normal? With all else being equal - 70°F ambient, rapid-rise yeast, properly-kneaded dough - why does the whole wheat require almost 5x the fermentation time? Given the lack of beery flavor from over-worked yeast, I'm assuming that they consume the starches from the whole-wheat flour more slowly.

Thanks,
MtbkrDave 

My last chocolate experiment was a bit (allright, a large bit) too sweet. This time, I eliminated the extra butter, brown sugar, and maple syrup, and went with 2 oz of bittersweet choc chips and 2 oz of milk choc chips. I added 5 oz of dried cherries and 4 oz of pecans. I also used 100% home-milled flour (mix of hard red and white wheat) and the sourdo.com Russian starter. After an initial 4 hour proof, I shaped and put in a pullman pan. Because my kitchen feels like a meat locker these days, I put the pullman pan in the microwave oven and put two cups boiling water in a sealed plastic container, then stuck it inside as well. It rose for 2 more hours, then I put the pullman pan into a cold oven, set it on 375 degrees F, and baked for 2 hours 15 minutes.

The sweetness is just about perfect for a breakfast/dessert bread. I think I'll add more cherries next time, but otherwise I'm pretty happy with it.

I had a *bunch* of extra rye starter after feeding this time, so I made a mostly-starter batch of sunflower and pumpkin seed rye inspired by PR's in BBA. I only added about 1.5 cups of hard red and white whole wheat total, the rest was 100% rye starter.

Started to play around with Rye flours and by using a combination of techniques found in Robertson’s Tartine Bread and Reinhart’s  Whole Grain books I came up with the following formula.  The dough is a 78% hydrated using a firm leaven and soaker.   

 The loaf’s have very nice crust with a nice soft crumb with large and random openness.  The flavor is mildly sour, but incredible depth of flavors with a pleasing long after taste.  The recipe has just a small dose of caraway seed to give it a little “classic rye” taste but not to overwhelm the more complex flavors developed by soaking the flour overnight.  I wasn’t sure how this was going to turn out as I did not acidify the soaker, I did however keep it cool at around 60F so the gluten remained pretty strong.    

Here is the formula and weights for a 2 loaf batch.  I bake enough for 8 at a time.

Leaven (78% Hydrated)    (Percent relative to Leaven)

50%        80 gm KA Bread

50%        80 gm Whole Grain Wheat (could use a rye)

78%        125 gm Water

31%        50 gm MATURE Starter

Soaker (78% Hydrated)

                24% Whole Grain Rye Flour                         170gm

                38% KA Bread Flour                                         270 gm

                38% Whole Grain Wheat (Spring)              270 gm

                78% Water Cool (70F)                                     555 gm

                2 tsp Caraway Seed (Whole)

For Final Mixing 

                2.4% SeaSalt                                                       20gm

Night Before:

                Mix Leaven and store overnight in cool 60-65F Location

                Mix Soaker till no dry components left using wet hands (7-10 minutes), let rest for 15 minutes and then mix again using stretch and fold technique till gluten starts to develop.  Store in Fridge for at least 12 hours.

Day 2:

                Cut and chop Stiff Leaven and Soaker together with SeaSalt.  Mix with wet hands and wet dough scraper till combined fully.  Rest for 30 minutes and using stretch and fold technique knead till passes window pane test.  It will pass it.  Dough is slightly stickier than the typical tartine bread but managable. 

Once gluten developed, place in clear container and bulk ferment for 3-4 hours turning the dough every 30-40 minutes.  I bulk fermented these loaves at 68F dough temp.  Dough was about 1.5 times original size before dividing.

                Gently Pull from bulk fermenting vessel onto lightly floured work surface and dived into 780gm loaves.  Carefully  pre-shape each loaf and allow to rest on floured work surface for 30-40 minutes.   After rest final shape and place in heavily floured proof baskets of bakers desire.  Proof a cool room temp (65-70F for approx 4 hours)  Loaf will again be about 1.5 to 2x size.

Slash and Place in 550F preheated oven and stone, using your favorite steam technique for the first 10 minutes.  Bake out till center is 205-210F and rack cool.  I do not turn oven down as it naturally cools and has a hard time keeping up with demand.    ENJOY!!!

ENJOY!!!!!

This was inspired by Franko's 25% Sour Rye with Toasted Seeds. I followed his recipe with the following alterations:

• Instead of AP flour, I milled 45% hard red wheat, 45% hard white wheat, and 10% rye, then sifted the results to a final extraction of 85%.
• That said, I ended up adding an extra 1/2 cup of KA BF during kneading to get the stickiness under control 
• After the final stretch-and-fold, I let the final dough proof for another two hours, then refrigerated overnight 
• This morning I took it out of the fridge, let it warm for two hours, shaped, and then let proof for 3.5 hours in a banneton

It's cooling now, I'll taste this evening!

This is my take on Bon Appétit's Thyme Gougères. I subbed chives for the thyme, and used finely milled hard white wheat for the flour. I also hedged my bets with 1/4 teaspoon of baking powder. These are cheesily delicious, and are begging to be filled with something (duck liver patè maybe?)

This is my take on Peter Reinhart's whole-grain struan. Instead of adding yeast, I made the firm starter using sourdo.com's San Francisco strain that I've been feeding nothing but home-milled wheat.

For the flour, I milled a mixture of 45% hard red wheat, 45% hard white wheat and 10% rye.

For the soaker I used 2.5 oz roasted (unsalted) sunflower seeds, plus .5 oz each of black seasame seeds, two different kinds of flax seed and two different mustard seeds. These are combined with flour and a little water, then left out overnight.

The firm starter was left out overnight to rise.

The next day, the firm starter and the soaker were worked together on a cutting board, then chopped up into a dozen pieces and mixed with the wet ingredients in my DLX. You can see it come together as I mix the preferments with oil, honey, and agave nectar. I also added in 2T of espresso-ground coffee beans that I'd finished roasting earlier in the day (Costa Rica La Legua Bourbon taken just into the beginning of second crack, for you sweetmarias.com fans), plus a teaspoon of caramel color from KA.

After the dough came together, it got a 15-minute autolyse.

Here's the final dough after another 10 minutes of hand kneading.

For the first 2 hours, I did a stretch-and-fold every half hour. Afterwards, it was left to rise for another 3 hours.

The risen dough was broken into four pieces and shaped for mini-loaves. They proofed for another 2.5 hours.

The loaves were cooked at 350 degrees for 45 minutes.  

The result is a dense, but not at all heavy, bread that is fantastic sliced thin and served with cheese and fruit.