Country Sourdough
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I baked this loaf as a present to thank neighbors of ours who will be taking care of our plants while we are away on our first vacation of almost two years. It was a last minute decision to make a country sourdough and there was a weird issue with the aliquot jar measuring rise. I have rarely had this happen but the aliquot jar never rose past 15% increase in volume. It is really odd that this should happen, the dough for the aliquot jar was removed from the main dough after a very thorough mixing. In fact, for the first time I used my stand mixer to knead this dough so you’d think that the levain would have been well incorporated in the dough. Anyhow, since I’ve been following pH I used that along with the expansion of the main dough to decide when to call bulk quits. The pH of the white flour levain at time of addition was 3.87. At the end of mixing in the stand mixer the pH of the dough was 5.45. End of bulk was pH 4.45 when the dough was shaped. End of warm proof was pH 4.02. Cold retard at 3ºC overnight and at the time of baking the next day the pH was 3.9.
This dough is 80% hydration, 15% stoneground whole wheat, 5% whole rye, 50% bread flour and 30% all purpose flour.
Not a bad bake, but it certainly had a bit more spread than I would have liked, I suspect that the hydration may have been a bit too high for these flours.