How many ways to mess up one bread :)
First, I can mis remember the amount of flour I'm measuring and end up at 72% hydration instead of 70%.
Then I can set the levain/flour/water to pseudo autolyse for 30 minutes, get an urgent call and come back to it 1.5 hours later.
Then I can start to work the dough, remarking how much slacker it was than last time and realize, after 15 minutes of slap and folds appearing to accomplish nothing, that I forgot the salt.
Fold in salt, continue slap and folds, get it to a dough consistency, still pretty extensible but the headache that started hours ago has become a nightmare and all the lymph nodes in my head and neck are swollen and screaming. So into the refrigerator for the night.
Many vitamin C's and a long night sleep, feeling much better in the morning. Take out the cold dough, shape it into a boule at this point realizing it will probably spread quite a bit due to the over hydration in addition to my shaping inexperience. Flour the same towel and place to rise in the same bowl as last time. Set the timer to check every 20 minutes, then every 10 minutes when it seemed it was getting close. Go to turn the dough onto my makeshift peel - and it's totally stuck! Ever so carefully slowly slowly peeling the towel back and teasing the dough off, after 20 minutes of this I have a ciabatta looking thing.
Thinking through some of the great "Saves" TFL'ers have reported, I grabbed a pan and thought I'd poor the whimpy thing in and see what happened. But I couldn't, I really didn't want a pan loaf, I wanted a crusty bread. With the large amount of starter I didn't think it could take much more.
It still seemed fairly bubbly even after being stretched all over trying to get it off the towel, and no one was looking so.....I stuffed it into a dutch oven and baked it. Poor funny looking thing lol.
A little oven spring gave it a bit of lift and surprisingly, the crumb texture is better than my last try and the crust is crunchy a little crackly and blistery, very tasty. I mean, I literally messed up all*the*steps, every one, but I like my messed up bread.
This recipe: http://stellaculinary.com/recipes/70-hydration-sourdough-boule
My messed up formula:
| 290 | total flour | |||||||
| 110 | g | Warm Water (Filtered) | 72% | |||||
| 200 | g | Poolish Starter | 40% | total weight | ||||
| 140 | g | Flour, Bread | 83% | |||||
| 50 | g | Flour, Whole Wheat | 17% | |||||
| 6 | g | Salt | 2% | |||||
| 506 | g | 1.12 | pounds | |||||
Comments
with a happy ending!....Thanks for the laugh...and it looks delicious!
I apologized to this poor bread repeatedly for my abuse/neglect and promised I wasn't laughing at it. I was rewarded with a delightfully funny looking loaf that does indeed taste delicious :-)
I am of the camp that insists you can't meet success without a taste of failure. You tried, you really tried, but didn't fail this time. You're gonna need to try harder next time! (Congratulations!)
And I've found if the dough sticks to my thin cotton/linen towels, I can spray a bit of water on the towel and it will release.
Cathy
Wow, I didn't fail hard enough in your book, wow that's a tough book! ;-)
LOL, I couldn't have tried to mess this up, with effort to do so, more than I did, as new as I am.
You are right, I'll take a save on the brink as a great lesson learned and keep tempting the fates to achieve that actual success to fail ratio, embracing both. Funny bread is humorous, it takes a lot to make bad bread I can't laugh with.
I didn't even think of a water spray, spritzing the towel would have worked for a release much better. Thanks Cathy!