Last week's sourdough projects
This is a 40/60 white/wheat sourdough from the book "Classic Sourdoughs". This was our everyday/breakfast bread all week. I doubled the recipe and took out a quarter cup of the white flour and replaced it with milled flax. Also, did water instead of milk because we were running low. I've been experimenting with keeping my doughs wetter and using a wet hand to knead instead of dusting flour. It took much longer to knead than last time I used this recipe but I'm really happy with the end result. The bread is very fluffy with a chewy crust. It was so wet that I struggled to get it into the loaf pan in any kind of shape but the top didn't explode like I was fearing.
I made a double batch of the basic recipe from the same book which is just white flour, water and salt. I kept it much wetter than I usually do, split it in half and used half for pizza crusts and half for a loaf in my banneton. I've been making homemade pizza crusts very regularly for several years but just started making sourdough crusts this spring. These last pies were the best yet. The crust was extremely flavorful, chewy and not too crisp which is how I like it. The dough handled like a dream while stretching onto my pizza pan. I almost wish I'd toned down the toppings even more to let the sour crust shine. If anyone is interested I can post my recipe/method for the crust.
The baby approves.
The loaf...I wasn't as happy with. I need to get a kitchen scale because I didn't divide evenly and the dough didn't fill out the banneton. There was no oven spring at all. However the flavor was fantastic and texture very good. Still need more practice and experience with high hydration. This is the most open crumb I've ever gotten on a loaf.
Does anyone know of a good video showing the texture of different levels of hydration and what they should look/feel like? The whole time I'm kneading I'm just thinking "This can't be right. This is just a big mess."
Does anyone know what could have caused the lower part of this loaf to be less airy than the top?