Sourdough Branching

I've been branching out a bit with my sourdough. 

One particular branch had to do with my sore tooth. I couldn't quite handle the usual crust when I was recovering from my crown replacement. In part because I was still using a good deal of rice flour to keep the dough from sticking to the cloth I was using in the loaf pan for the overnight chill/ferment cycle. Rice flour makes for a much harder crust than I like, though it also allows for really pretty patterns because it comes out white. 

The loaf to the left is one that had a LOT of rice flour being used to keep the cloth mostly non-stick, and I did it only once because the texture was so hard for me to chew. I read that one could use a 50:50 mix of rice flour and regular flour and that would mitigate the texture problem, but I ended up using the mix for just rubbing directly on the cloth AND using Farmer John's very coarsely ground whole wheat flour directly on the dough to keep it from sticking to the counter and that was what I actually used to sprinkle all over the dough after I had it in the cloth to keep it from immediately sticking to the cloth. That helped a lot with the crust texture and, as far as I was concerned, the color of the crust improved as well, as it became ALL golden brown.

The second part of that branch was going to baking the bread in a loaf pan instead of just on its own on the lid of the Dutch oven, and I had to do some experimentation with that to get that to work. The blistering 450 degrees might help with oven spring, but it was going to completely blast the outside of the loaf before it cooked all the way through. So instead, I put it in at 450 for 10 minutes and then lowered the temp to 375 for another 30 and got this bemusing loaf.

With the pan around the lower half of it, the crust there didn't get hard at all. I did use the lame on the top of this loaf and it not only drew out of that opening, but also made a tremendous ear as well! I was pretty impressed by the oven spring, and it made better toast and was easier to make sandwiches out of.

The other branching had to do with discovering more of the mechanics of the bulk rise portion of the whole process. It turns out that the more of the initial leavening one adds, the faster the bulk fermentation is going to go. This seems like it should be obvious, but it was cool to understand it a bit more.

My main recipe used 160 grams of leavening to 500 grams of flour and 375 grams of water and 10 grams of salt, and it was a very wet dough. Just going to 350 grams of water gave me a far more manageable dough that held its shape a lot better and was very content to go into the bread pan and just become a loaf.  By using just 60 grams of leavening to 500 grams of flour and 375 grams of water and 10 grams of salt, I was able to get the same dough, but it was one that could bulk ferment overnight! So if I was starting the dough in the late afternoon, I could just turn it a bunch and go to sleep and by morning it would be ready to shape and go into the fridge to firm up so that I could slash it and get it into the oven in the afternoon.

So depending on my schedule, I can bake bread any time!!

I mix the leavening as soon as I think about baking bread and I only mix what I need, now, no throwing anything out and no trying for the low amount of starter to feeding anymore, as my sourdough starter is pretty well developed now and all I am trying to do is propagate what I need. I'm not breeding for speed anymore. So if it's early in the morning, I'll put 40 grams of Farmer John's coarse whole wheat flour, 40 grams of bread flour, and 80 grams of water together and leave it on the countertop with a rubber band at the top of what I've mixed. If it's late in the afternoon, I'll mix 15 grams of coarse whole wheat, 15 grams of bread flour and 30 grams of water into my starter and put the rubber band at the top of the mixture.

When it's doubled, I'll get the water, 350 for morning dough, 375 for evening dough, into a bowl and then add the amount of leaven I've grown for that kind of dough, 160 for day dough, 60 for night, and mix it into the water thoroughly. Then I'll mix in all the flours and salt. I usually go with 375 grams of bread flour and 125 grams of commercial or fine ground whole wheat flour, not the Farmer John's. I just use a spoon and mix it until it all comes together. I don't knead or anything.

I then cap the dough with a shower cap from one of our many road trips, and let it sit for about half an hour, and then turn it by wetting my hand and then lifting and folding a side over the rest of the dough, turning the bowl ninety degrees and then doing it again. The first time I do it a good dozen times, but I stop if it gets hard to do. Then I wait a while, usually thirty minutes, and do it again but only four times. I turn it one more time after another wait and then I do three sets of coil folds, again spaced about thirty minutes apart. The timing isn't that important, I just like doing that many because I like the resulting gluten formation. I'm gentler with my day dough, and give it more time as it's doing the bulk fermenting while I'm doing the various types of folds. The night dough I'm usually faster (sometimes just fifteen or twenty minutes between folds depending on when the dough looks relaxed) doing the folds because I want them all in before bedtime.

The night dough then gets to sit covered on the counter top for the rest of the night. The day dough I let bulk up a bit, and then both of them get shaped.

Shaping is just pouring the dough onto the counter with wet hands, pulling one side over, the other side over, the top down and then rolling it up tight. I pull the roll against the countertop to seal the edge to the dough and then pull each end so that they seal up. Then the whole thing goes into a very well floured (with that 50-50 AP to brown rice flour mix) towel in a 3x5 inch bread pan. I go all around the edges of the loaf with whole wheat flour, sprinkling it on and pulling up on the towel so I can make sure that it's not sticking to the dough at that point. 

I cover the top with the coarse flour, fold the towel over and put the whole thing into the fridge. The day dough gets to stay there overnight, and I bake it in the morning. The night dough gets to stay in the fridge for at least four hours.

When I want to bake, I heat the oven up to 500 with the upsidedown Dutch oven IN the oven on the wok ring. I basically start the oven, turn on an hour timer, and walk away. When the timer goes off, I cut a piece of parchment, and then get the dough out of the fridge. I upend it onto the parchment, slash it with a lame, and then spray it with a water bottle.

I put it on the lid of the Dutch oven and then put the pot over the bread and back the temperature down to 450 for 25 minutes. That's when I take the pot off the lid and let it brown at 450 for 10 minutes.

You can see that this bread is on the lid on a piece of parchment in the oven. I found that if I do this upsidedown thing, that the loaf browns more evenly after the "lid" comes off. 

It's also one of the most spectacular reveals in baking I've ever had and it makes the whole kitchen smell wonderful. This particular loaf was an overnight fermentation one, where I'd made the dough late in the day and baked it after lunch the next day. I'm eating fewer carbs these days, so half the loaf goes to one of several neighbors of ours. Everyone likes fresh bread, and it's nicer to have half a fresh loaf than a whole loaf that gets stale in a few days. With no preservatives by the end of the week it's a little tough and there's only so much French Toast I'm willing to eat.

The resulting loaf is really nice. I like how the ear is pretty consistent, and you can see the crumb is nice and has a variety of bubble sizes. There's good blistering on the crust and you can tell it's not nearly as "white" as the all rice flour finish of the earlier loaf.