Success Story

Last Thursday I made some dough. I wrapped it in parchment paper, put it in a plastic bag and refrigerated it.

On Saturday it traveled 400 miles with me in a little cooler which didn't keep it cool very long. On Sunday it was slashed and baked.

This was no traditional loaf, though. It was made not with a starter but with whey and vinegar per the USDA recipe.

On Sunday when we unwrapped the dough I expected to find a blob of mush. Quite the contrary, the dough held together reasonably well. We were able to separate it cleanly from the parchment. After a little fraissage on a floured bench it was a bakeable loaf.

The loaf had great oven spring. We cut it up and it was served, still somewhat warm, to everyone's satisfaction. We noticed, however, that the bread was getting progressively more sour as it cooled off. My cousin and I were surprised at this, so the lesson learned was to let it cool off COMPLETELY for maximum sourness.

The loaf had an open crumb and a nice lactic-acid sourness, just like old-school SFSD. Everyone was satisfied.

A couple of board members have tried this recipe and report a lack of flavor and a degraded gluten structure. My experience is the opposite with respect to flavor, which is a nice, strong lactic-acid sourness. The gluten may undergo some changes due to the added acids but the bench fraissage seems to take care of this, and the time it sat before baking may have had an effect.

My experience was quite satisfactory this time around.