The Fresh Loaf

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Sort of Holy Grail

Alan.H's picture
Alan.H

Sort of Holy Grail

San Francisco Sourdough has always been a sort of holy grail for me, based entirely on its reputation. I have only previously tasted my own few attempts to bake it, drawn from the many SFSD recipes available online and in books and I have judged the results  to have varied between "OK" and "not too bad", so I was delighted to see David Snyder's blog entry on 7th March 2019 and his SFSD formula which is fairly closely derived from that of the original bakers. I had to try it.

I followed David's adaptation with just a couple of tweaks. I doubled the volume to make two loaves and  reduced the percentage of whole wheat flour from 25% to 20%. I was also concerned that the  60% hydration was rather too low for a formula which included whole wheat so I upped it to 65%. In fact when I came to mix the final dough it felt far too dry so I added another 50g of water which raised the hydration to 69%.

I usually then develop the dough by hand but on this occasion I decided to save a little time by using my KA mixer, which with 2kg+ of dough turned out to be a bad idea. The dough immediately climbed up the dough hook and started to entomb the whole mixer.

15 minutes later after I had scraped the dough back down into the bowl I carried on with a series of s & f's and then with half hourly s & f's for three hours before leaving it in peace at room temperature for a further five hours.  Dividing and shaping was followed by one further hour at room temperature followed by about 14 hours in the fridge.

The loaves were removed from the fridge and left uncovered at room temperature for an hour while the oven heated. This was just to dry out the surface after an overnight proof with a shower cap on.

 And the crumb.

 

 Strangely although the two loaves were baked at the same time in the same oven, the one below has a more opem crumb!

Well although I have never tasted San Francisco Sourdough this comes as close to my expectations as I could have hoped. It has a delicious complex flavour and an impressive sour tang. Better still toasted.

So . Thank you David for introducing me to this formula. I see that your next bake will be based on your conversation with Ramon Padilla and I look forward to that.

Alan

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Comments

mikedilger's picture
mikedilger

I'm curious what approximate temperature the bulk ferment went at.

Alan.H's picture
Alan.H

I would guess that over the total bulk of about 8 hours the temperature would have been around 68-70F.

I have just caught up with your bake of the Mike Giraudo version of SFSD, beautiful scoring and lovely crumb. 

Alan

dmsnyder's picture
dmsnyder

I'm happy this turned out so well for you.

If it tastes as good as it looks, it must be really delicious.

David

Floydm's picture
Floydm

Beautiful!