January 3, 2014 - 8:35am
BBA Basic Sourdough
I followed Reinhart's recipe for "Basic Sourdough" and made 2 loaves (1 to give away to a friend).
I finally got some KAF bread flour which seems to have made a major difference and improvement (got good fermentation rises at all phases, and got a very nice oven spring).
1/8th of the flour is WW, and 1/8th is medium rye flour.
I'm watching my carbohydrate intake (am managing my weight ... have lost 20 lbs in the last year) ... so I had a very thin slice with butter - delicious! (although not sour, which is fine)
As evidenced by the crumb shot, the hydration is "low" at 65% ... I have to say that the dough was extremely elastic. I'm thinking on the next go-around to increase the hydration to 70% to see what happens.
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Looks very nice and must taste great.
Happy Baking.
Ian
You're friend will be ecstatic! Boldly baked with a gorgeous crumb Just perfect inside and out! Well Done!
Gents:
Thanks for the nice compliments.
I gave 1 loaf to my friend (a coworker) about 2 hours after baking ... I handed it to him in a brown paper bag and told him it was freshly baked ... he immediately tore the end off and ate it, and declared that it was delicious. Very cool. This guy has spent quite a bit of time in Europe (particularly France) as well as the middle east and far east. He certainly has a refined palate so I was very grateful for his nice compliment.
The kids enjoyed it as well, it's mostly gone after 1 day, so it's time to make another at 70% hydration!
Cheers-
Dave
I forgot to mention ... I am not satisfied with the lack of ear ... I watched the scoring tutorials and will follow the method from now on. I hope it works.
I also forgot to mention that this friend of mine, to whom I gave the loaf ... we went on a local business trip to Alexandria, VA< and on the way back stopped at a "Paul" Cafe and Boulangerie (a French-themed restaurant chain in D.C.) and it was very cool to look at the bread loaves prepared in the French tradition. Of particular note, there were several loaves of "Sourdough Pain de Campagne" and they reminded me of my batards with the exception of the grigne and ear (which looked almost exactly like Dave Snyder's as depicted on this site).
So ... onward an upward. I refreshed my starter this morning and it is now warming in the utility closet at 85F, then into the fridge and on to another loaf or two.
Cheers-
Dave
It looks delicious, I like the crumb like that. It is better for toasting. If you do make the same loaf again with higher hydration, please do post another crumb shot, as I would love to see how much difference 5% extra hydration makes.
I did in fact make more BBA Basic Sourdough Bread using higher hydration ... look at my most recent blog posting.
I went back and reviewed the recipe, although I haven't computed the hydration I'm going to guess that the loaf pictured in this post is more like 61%. My starter is about 50% hydration, and the main dough (per the BBA recipe) uses 12 - 14 ozs water to 20.25 oz flour making the hydration range between 59% and 69%.
With that said on the new loaf I used 14 ozs water and then dribbled in another 0.5 oz ... still using the 50% starter I'd guess the hydration to be around 68%.
Regards-
Dave
PS: Here is the crumb of the higher hydration loaf:
Sorry ... here is the image: