Cook's Illustrated sourdough article
I am wondering if other bakers here on TFL have seen the article in the latest Cook's Illustrated magazine on sourdough. I think it is a great primer on creating a starter and baking sourdough breads. The instructions are very clear and even advanced bakers can pick up some ideas. Their technique using a Dutch oven for baking is a bit different than the usual method in that the bake is started in a cold oven. I am in the process of testing this using their pain au levain recipe available on their website. If this works out as well as the usual approach of adding the dough to the hot pot, I will adapt this method for other sourdough breads. I always find it a bit skittish dropping dough into a scalding hot pot!
if anyone is interested, I will report on my results.
I saw it when I flipped through the latest issue at the library, but did not read it - just did not feel like I'd have much to learn there.
While I've only tried it a few times, I've never had any issues. Never done a side by side comparison, so I can't vouch for the result being exactly the same as you get with a preheated DO, but whatever the differences were, they weren't significant enough for me to remember them.
This method worked well. This is the result.