sourdough boule

Yes, happily, though Susan deserves credit for the basic recipe.  I only tweaked it a bit.

I began by tripling Susan's Basic Sourdough Recipe for her small boule, and substituted rye for whole wheat (personal preference).  So my formula was:

128 g stiff San Francisco sourdough starter

548 g water

741 g All Trumps High Gluten Flour

64 g Hodson Mills Rye Flour

16 g salt

To this recipe I also added ¼ teaspoon of diastatic malt powder.  To be honest, I’m not sure why I added the diastatic malt, but I seem to remember it showing up in a recipe and thought I’d try it. 

This produced a little under 1500 g of dough, and I probably should have divided the dough into three loaves, but I opted on two large boules instead.

In a large bowl, I combined the starter with the flour, then added the diastatic malt and the water and autolysed for 60 minutes.  I then added the salt and did three stretch and folds in the bowl, spaced at 10 minute intervals.

At the end of that time, I lightly oiled my counter surface and did a full stretch and fold, which I repeated after 45 minutes.  After that I allowed the dough to double at room temperature (which took several hours) and then prepared the boules for the bannetons. I worked the dough by rolling and pulling the dough over the counter surface until I got a good tight skin, then placed the dough upside down in the bannetons, sealing any cracks that remained.

The two bannetons went into a large plastic bag, into which I blew a bit of air so that the plastic stayed well above the surface of the dough.  Retardation time was approximately 12 hours in the refrigerator.

Next morning, I removed the boules and allowed the dough to rest on the counter for an hour.  I then began to preheat my oven, which I knew would take at least another hour.  By that time the dough was ready to score and load.

My baking stone went on the bottom third rack in the oven to make certain I had the height I needed for the covering bowls.

I used a large rimless cookie sheet with a sheet of parchment paper to load the boules, placing a stainless steel bowl over each. (I was able to use two Kitchenaide stainless steel mixing bowls, whose handles offered easy removal.)

I baked the boules covered at 500 for 30 minutes, then removed the cover and lowered the heat to 475 for another 20 minutes.  The boules stayed in the oven for an additional 5 minutes with the heat turned off, then were removed to a cooling rack. 

I know the heat level might seem excessively high, but I think it’s because I use a one-inch cordelite baking stone, which absorbs a lot of heat.  

HI Marni,

I too had trouble figuring out the picture posting, and I'm not altogether sure I have it mastered, but I'll keep trying.  Altering the size of the photos seems to be my biggest hangup.

We did enjoy the loaf, thanks!