Thom Leonard's Country Boule
I was asked to bring a couple loaves of sourdough and a loaf of multigrain for our Deschutes rafting trip menu. I baked off Struan and Thom Leonard's sourdough.
I have a couple questions re the rounding and shaping of the loaves. I mixed the loaves on a Sunday and retarded them overnight. The dough had doubled by the morning. Since I wasn't going to bake them until the evening I punched them down. Monday evening the dough was right back up there. The directions say to gently round into a tight boule and shape into a tight loaf without deflating. I can't figure out how to do this. The dough was quite slack and full of big gas bubbles (for lack of a better description). I would have had great open crumb if I could have shaped without deflating. Should I just have done stretch and folds rather than trying to actually shape tightly? The bread's flavor was awesome, the crumb, not tight but not open either.