Sour Dough Frustration Down Under
Hey there!!!!! I'm new to the amazing site and all things sourdough and bread actually. It had me at the first bubble in my starter! I Like most of you on here I find myself hooked. I have developed a healthy obsession in the past two months and my husband has been awfully overlooked and replaced by scales, jars and a lot of mess. My kitchen looks like an explosion in a flour factory, I'm finding dough in places I didn't know existed not excluding on my body and in my hair, and don't get me started on the amount of cash I'm flashing about on organic whole food flours.
I've got my local libraries full collection of all things bread related, I've watched hours of Youtube tutorials, read a whole load of blog posts, and my instagram account has been taken over to sourdough porn....... But here's the thing.
Do you think I can find an easy, plain speaking, tutorial which would allow for the following factors in my sourdough bread making.
Fabulous crunchy crust
Tasty chewy-fish open creamy crumb
Doesn't expect me to get out of bed to slap and fold and care for my wild starter like a baby?
Doesn't confuse with bakers percentages ( my maths is shit) or jargon
Uses a straight starter
kneaded???
I found this awesome tutorial by Patrick Ryan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FVfJTGpXnU [1] Which I followed an had good results from but I didn't get an open crumb.
And everything else I've read or watched uses Autolyse and Levain as in this blog post from The Perfect loaf https://www.theperfectloaf.com/beginners-sourdough-bread/ [2]
Which seems much more complex and now I'm slightly confused by cold Autolyse, cold retards and the like.
Im a Brit who lives in Australia and it's driving me a bit potty each time I tend to a new batch of dough, fussing over it for days on end like a baby only to take the promise of the holy grail out the oven and have my crumb hopes dashed into smithereens!
So can any one who's been here help save me from a divorce and give me a point in the right direction please.
Thank you, I'm looking forward to some decent bread chat and baking banter.
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