February 7, 2007 - 3:52pm
Made my first sourdough loaf! Good and bad news...
Well, I tried the Thom Leonard Country French Bread from Maggie Glazer's "Artisan Baking" book yesterday and the good news is that the bread tastes yummy! The yeast/bacteria in my starter are definitely a keeper. The bad news? The loaf didn't rise enough - parts of it didn't have any holes in it at all. Could this be due to...
- my starter not being active enough? (I refreshed it midday the day before, then made the levain the night before)
- not a long enough rise? My first rise was 3 hours and my 2nd was 4.5 hours...
- adding too much water? I found that if I followed the recipe exactly, the dough was too stiff - probably due to the organic white flour I'm using...a persistent issue with this flour. So I added a fair amount of water to the dough - maybe too much. It was nice and soft just after the kneading, but didn't really tighten up over time.
- not kneading enough? I use a KitchenAid 5qt mixer, and usually this bowl is large enough, but I found yesterday that the dough was constantly being drawn up over the top of the dough hook and into the mechanism of the mixer. As a result, I was constantly having to stop the mixer, pull out the spatula and coax it back down into the bowl. Anyone else have this problem?
Feedback?