Beginner's Luck?
Tried a new method on a standard bake for me with the best results so far (on the outside anyway). Beginner's Luck? Will have to see if I can repeat it.
When it comes to folds and shaping, I kind of feel like I'm all thumbs. When to fold? Which fold to do? How hard to stretch? How hard to degas? Which pre-shape? Etc. Skills I need to develop, but I'm not very consistent yet.
I started doing this technique [1], and it just makes sense to me. I can feel when the dough starts to change. So for this bake, I used this technique, but spread it out over 9 hours. Rather than worrying about how my gluten is holding up and what fold I should do to keep it built up, I just kept slowly developing it as fermentation progressed, and the end of the 4th set was my pre-shape. From there, the concept follows Dan's Simple Loaf Pan technique. Place in banneton or pan and let it ferment till 90+% on the aliquot. You can let it go that long because you fully degassed and punched it down during the 4th set of kneading. Technique probably won't produce an open, lacy crumb, but I'm usually looking for an airy, sandwich crumb anyway.
Both of these loaves were for a friend, so no crumb shot. Asked to have one sent, and will post it if I get it. By far the best oven spring I've got in both loaves. Free standing is 15% WW. Pan loaf is 15% rye. Formula is for the WW, but just swap out the WW for rye on the other loaf. I did the exact same method. Prepared both loaves side-by-side last night. Friend wanted one free standing and one pan loaf.