EHanner...Help!
Eric,
I tried your recipe for the baguttes/batards (using starter) and I had some problems that maybe you can help me understand. First I refreshed my starter at 6 hours intervals for a day and a half before I started. It's the Nancy Silverton starter I made years ago and still use when making some of her sourdough recipes. It was bubbling nicely when I started the recipe. Anyway, following your recipe I used 167g starter, 375g K.A. French style flour (supposed to be the equivalent of French T55), 225g water, and 10g salt. Mixed it all together, let it rest for 45 min. did a fold and placed it in a lightly oiled gallon size plastic container, turned it over (smooth side up), covered it and set it aside at room temp. for 12 hours. After 12 hours I didn't have any rise to speak of in the dough. So, i left it for another 3 hours, thinking maybe the room temp. was cooler than 78 deg. and after 3 hrs. still very little rise. At this point I figured I better do something or I'm going to lose it. So I stretched the dough out on the counter sprinkled 1 tsp. instant yeast over the surface and kneaded it for about 8 minutes giving it a good workout to fully incorporate the yeast. Then let set it into the fridge for about 3 hours, removed it to room temp. and let it rise until doubled. Removed it from the container did a couple of folds, returned it to the container for about an hour, then put it on the counter divided it in two and let it rest for 30 min. I then shaped it and placed it in a well floured couche and let it rise for about 1.5 hours. Flipped it from the couche onto my floured transport board, placed it on parchment lined pans, scored it and baked it.
The only thing I can figure is that my starter was not working properly. Can you tell me what you do to your starter in this recipe to bring it up to speed and get the proper rise without having to resort to yeast? The exterior of the loaves look o.k. but the interior, well it needs "big time" help because it sure doesn't resemble the interior of those lovely loaves you made. I feel like the gods must be angry :-) Seriously, I really want to understand where I went wrong. Any thoughts you have would be greatly appreciated.
Howard
Batards
Batard Interior