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I did my due diligence searching for anyone who had made this bread either without using a mixer or had made this as baguettes.  My search came up empty on both accounts.  So it was high time to take the plunge.  This is my first bake from Mr. Hamelman's book, although I did bake two of his pain au levain breads from formulae posted by someone somewhere on the Web.  This bread has a combination of castelvetrano and kalmata olives.

I'd never worked with as stiff a dough before, by at least 4-5%.  This one clocks in 63% hydration, and performing French Folds on this bread was akin to performing French Folds on a flaccid basketball.  The dough sure was stiff and I did't know what to expect down the line.  But the results are quite satisfying, and as with all of the breads that I've made for the first time, I really didn't quite know what to expect.  But the dough became more manageable and extensive between folds1 and 2 and more so on the final fold.  

Shaping was a cinch, and the amount of oven spring speaks for itself.  The crust has a satisfyingly sharp snap to it and the amount of olives, 25%, pretty much guarantees some olive in just abut every bite.

I didn't want to risk blowing the whole bake on baguettes that might have turned out to be trash-worthy, so I hedged my bets with 2 stubby baguettes and one batard.

Changes from original formula included:

• Resized the dough amount to 1000g total.
• "Autolyse" without the called-for salt.
• Hand mixing rather than by machine.  150 French Folds, a 5 minute rest and then another 150 French Folds.
• Olives incorporated at 1st set of Letter Folds instead of at end of mix.
• 3 Letter Folds instead of 1.
• 2 hr. bulk fermentation instead of 2 1/2 hrs.
• Overnight retard and bake straight out of retard rather than bench top proof and bake.

 2x350g baguettes, 1x750g batard.  13 minutes steam: baguettes total bake time- 28 min.  Batard total bake time - 33 min + 2 min venting.

For comparison I made 2 125% liquid levains concurrently.  One using my 60% stiff rye starter and one using my standard 75% mixed flour ever ready levain. 2 builds, just as Mr. Hamelman suggests.  As I discovered, the ever ready levain based mix outpaced the stiff rye contender easily.  Not only was the top populated with a lot of frothy bubbles after each build but it grew significantly more.  The levain on the right was used in the mix.

after first build (~8 hrs).

after 2nd build (~3-4 hrs).  I knocked back the growth on the right one before realizing that I wanted to take this picture, so the delta between the two is even more pronounced than the picture indicates. 

alan

Last weekend I conducted an experiment to test the theory that a larger quantity of sourdough starter produces a more sour tasting bread. On the face of it, this seems obvious, but I thought I'd read an alternative theory. The alternative theory is that less starter means a slower-proofing dough, which means more time for the sour flavours to develop.

I used Trevor Wilson's low-hydration dough as my basic recipe, using rye flour instead of whole wheat. I doubled the pre-dough ingredients and then divided the pre-dough in half on baking day.

I made two No Muss No Fuss rye starters, one using 3g seed to make 81g starter; the other using 6g seed to make 160g starter.

My NMNF 'mother' starter has been in the fridge for at least a month now, and definitely has been developing its sour taste. This came through on both loaves. My partner and I agreed that the one with the larger amount of starter did have a stronger and more sour taste. However, the difference wasn't huge. Unfortunately, she was the only "blind" tester I had! I suspect others might have been able to detect a slight difference, without being able to identify it as a difference in sour-ness.

I'm still developing my dough handling and shaping skills, which I think explains why one loaf (the one with 160g starter) came out flatter than the other.

A third loaf I baked the same weekend was a complete pancake!