The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

This week's sourdough

davidg618's picture
davidg618

This week's sourdough

Currently, I'm only baking three bread formulae (our daily breads), baguettes, and two sourdoughs: 50% each WW and Bread flours , and a mostly-white flour (equal amounts AP and Bread flours and 10% Whole Rye). I alternate the sourdough bakes week-to-week; and, for the two most recent bakes, I've retarded the fermenting dough for 17 hours @ 54°F. I'm doing this to extract maximum flavors.

This is the first mostly-white version with my new starter.(67% Hydration)

The flavor is all I could hope for--in both the crust and crumb. The Rye is indistinguishable by itself, yet without it the taste would be less. I've been baking this formula for at least a year; its predecessors were a less than inspiring all-white version, and a only slightly better flavored 10% Whole Wheat version. The retardation hasn't changed the formula's flavor, but deepened its intensity.

Volume increase from dough to finished bread isn't talked about much on TFL, rather oven-spring is the more common measure. These loaves, exhibited the greatest volume change I've experienced to date. To give some sense of it here is a photograph--minus the "taster slices". The container holding the loaves is that used to ferment the dough. The mixed dough occupied slightly more than 1 liter, approximately 1100 ml (the bottom of the photograph). 

David G

Comments

Bread Breaddington's picture
Bread Breaddington

I find a bit of rye does seem to do niceley in an otherwise white dough, somehow. Can't taste it, but it does something.

lumos's picture
lumos

LOL  this is the cutest pic of loaves I've ever seen,  snuggling up in the measuring cup!  Sweet! :)

Lovely, warm crust colour, DavidG.  The crumb looks very nice with open texture, too.  I've been keepin the hydration of regular loaves 70-75% to ensure open texture with holes, but seeing your result and some of others' with less than 70%, I'm thinking of lowering mine. 

I entirely agree with this account....

The Rye is indistinguishable by itself, yet without it the taste would be less.

I've found a little bit of rye does definitely adds depth and complexity in flavour, too.  I don't bake rye-heavy breads these day anymore, but most of my recipes include a small amount of rye exactly for that effect, including my baguettes.

Also retarding the dough for 16-18 hrs is my favourite trick to improve the flavour, in almost any recipe.  It's funny to think that years ago right at the dawn of my obsessive breadmaking, I thought retarding the dough in a cold temperature was the maddest thing you'd ever want to do to your dough, but now whenever I see a new recipe without long retard, the first thing I think is 'how can I retard this?' :p

lumos

 

 

davidg618's picture
davidg618

When I started baking at this level, two years ago, I was a member of the holeyer-than-thou club for about three months. But, I use (and serve) sourdough bread primarily for sandwiches; there's no flavor in a hole, and I like to taste the bread along with whats between two slices; and my wife got quickly tired of washing my T-shirts spotted with mustard or spicy tomato chutney that had escaped through a bread hole.

This dough was so nice to work with, and the levain's yeast so robust--the dough had tripled in volume overnight--I shaped the loaves slightly tighter than usual; glad I did: might have had blow-outs in a looser dough. The result was a crumb,  slighty more closed than usual, but still well-set, translucent alveoli throughout, with an al dente mouthfeel.

David G

 

sam's picture
sam

Looks great to me, and tasty.