Always learning!
I love that my journey with bread is a constant learning experience. Recently, I made a bit of a change to my process for how I refresh my refrigerated starter in preparation for my weekly bake. The result is that my starter is much more active when I'm ready for it, and my weekly loaves are super predictable in terms of their performance (within the other important parameters like temperatures, % of levain in the mix, etc.) Recently, I moved to 5g:10g:10g for my starting feed of the refrigerated starter. I try to do this at about noon the day before baking. At 6 hours, I feed again with 50g:50g (so, 1:2:2 again) and let that go for 4-6 hours (depending on how tired I am.) Before bed, I pull out 75g for storage, and feed at 50:100:100 overnight. In the morning, I mix up my flours, water and levain, and am off to the races.
This week's bake was my usual formula with 75% AP, 10% WW, 10% Semolina, and 5% rye. Mix all but the salt, and rest for 30 minutes (fermentolyse!) Pinch in salt, and slap/fold about 30 times, then rest 30 minutes. Slap/fold (gently) about 20 times, then rest for 30 minutes. One stretch and fold (1 fold at each point on the "compass"), and bulk for 90 minutes. Gently remove from bulk container, divide, and pre-shape. Clean up my bulk container and other accoutrements, then final shape, into cloth lined bannetons, and rest for 1 hour. Into fridge for 3 hours, then bake. All of the resting is done in my proofer at 75F. Predictable bulk and final rise, predictable oven spring, and predictable level of sour in the finished bread. Yay! :) A few pics from this week......
After the fridge rise:
Slashed:
Cooling:
Perfect toast this morning to start the day, and probably a grilled cheese sandwich for dinner tonight......Yummy! :)
Rich