Todays bread

A few weeks ago I trashed my sourdough starter because I was just sick of fooling with it.  Well, 3-4 days ago I decided to start another.  I'm a professional bean counter so the math and calculating is not difficult for me but this time I decided to make a firm starter and go strictly by eye.  I started with rye and moved to whole wheat and this morning added the first white flour.

Anyway, this morning I divided the biga I made yesterday and roughly mixed my bagel and french bread doughs.  I set them aside to rest a few minutes and decided to feed the starter.  I had about three ounces of it in my hand heading for the garbage can when it occured to me to put it in the dough.  It smelled good and was kind of working.  There are still a few flecks of rye in it and it was interesting to watch as I kneaded it because the starter was a distinctly different color than the rest of the dough.

I don't know that it made any difference but I did seem to get much better oven spring than normal.  The biga was half of the final dough, less the starter and about 67% hydration.

My wife is out of town so I get to eat her half for dinner tonight. : )