San Francisco Style Sourdough 4.5 adapted from Dave Synder
[1]After reading about Dave's never-ending quest to create the perfect San Francisco Sourdough bread I felt it was time to give his latest recipe a whirl. I have never been to SF so I don't know exactly what the final bread should taste like other than by his description.
I tried very hard to follow his exact recipe but alas my string of good luck continued and my refrigerator decided to mimic an oven. I was forced to let the bulk ferment dough rest in my mini beer/assorted alcohol refrigerator instead of the shaped loaves. I let the dough bulk ferment over night and the next afternoon while I waited for my refrigerator to be fixed I let the dough rest at room temperature for a couple of hours. I then formed the loaves into Boules and let them rise in their bannetons inside my oven with a bowl of hot water for 3.5 hours.
The dough was nice an elastic and puffed up very nicely. Unfortunately I didn't realize that the risen loaves would be too big to fit in my oven at the same time. I had to adjust the loaves while the oven was nice and hot and subsequently one of the loaves was hanging off the baking stone for a few minutes causing it to sag slightly.
The final result was an excellent crust and a nice open and light crumb. I did however discover the first loaf I cut into had a mysterious hole running through a big part of the bread, almost like someone or thing was trying to dig its way to China.
Overall the bread turned out excellent. I would have expected it to be slightly more sour though and I'm not sure why it was so mild. It could be due to the fairly new converted starter I used. I turned my 65% AP starter to Dave's multi flour starter at 50% so maybe it wasn't mature enough.
You can find Dave's recipe here: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/27982/san-franciscostyle-sourdough-bread-two-ways-3252012 [2].
Thanks again Dan for an excellent recipe!