Skip to main content

Dang. It worked...

I used an old bread pan instead of a banneton, and shaped the bread before putting it let the dough in the pan in a tea towel rubbed with rice flour overnight in the fridge instead of just in a bowl in the fridge. The dough was just under the lip of the pan when I put it in, and I wrapped the whole thing with a produce bag that I closed with a twist tie.

When the oven and Dutch oven were hot (at 500) in the morning, I got the dough out, and it had risen over the lip of the pan. I dumped it out onto a piece of parchment paper a little more roughly than I wanted; but it got there, and tried to brush off some of the loose rice flour, but didn't get even most of it. The dough just barely fit onto the lid of my Dutch oven, and I got the pot over it handily.

And then I forgot to turn the temperature down to 450. I let it bake at 500 for 25 minutes and then uncovered the most glorious oven spring I've ever had. I turned it down, then, to 450 and let it go 20 minutes, and it came out as pictured.

It's about a third again as big as the loaf I was doing by shaping it last thing before baking it, kind of proving (ha ha) that letting it proof after the shaping really does help with the oven spring a LOT and then volume it picked up was all in a far more open crumb.

Below are pictures of the crumb.  





There's a lot of good variation on the hole sizes, and lots and lots of them, and the texture of the bread itself was wonderful and far more like the artisan loaves from around here.  Someone on my Facebook page said to autolyze while waiting on the starter, and I may try that next time in addition to the shaped fridge fermentation time.

So many more experiments. I even have a "lab notebook" on all my sourdough experiments, all kept in a Field Notes notebook with all the timings and all the by-gram measurements of ingredients when I do my loaves. We'll see how it goes.
Yes. I am obsessed. 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Everything Is A Lot

My mother took my hand, as we were going to leave tonight, and she very deliberately, gently, and slowly pressed a kiss on the back of my hand. And at the look on her face, I clasped her hand back just as gently, but firmly, and I kissed her on her forehead. She smiled and let me go.  Words are failing her. I find it ironic that the only way that I can process her now word-muddled existence is through my long practice with words.  On November 13th, my sister and father did a video doctor's check with my mother. Their GP was so alarmed at her inability to truly respond to their questions made their primary doctor tell them that they had to go to the ER. That there was something seriously wrong with her and they had to get her looked at as quickly as possible. The three of them spend two horrific days in the over crowded ER at UCSD, in order to get the CAT scans and MRI that showed a very large shadow in her brain.  This was while John and I were in Kauai. We heard the begi...

Hard Things

I'm getting asked a lot these days about how my mother is doing. It's never easy to answer, because she's dying. She's pretty comfortable for all that, all of her needs are being taken care of. She has hospice checking on her every time she needs anything. She's being made as comfortable as possible with modern medicine and care.  Most people end up saying, "That's so hard."  And the only thing I can really do is nod. There's something in my head that always says, "It's not hard the way you think it's hard." It doesn't detract from the fact that everything is pretty difficult right now. I've always hated my emotions. They're always pretty difficult for me to access, except when I have the opportunity to process them with someone else, extroverted emotional expression seems to be one of the few ways I can deal with them. Grief always eats all my energy.  When I first came home from San Diego after the Thanksgiving perio...

Thankful

Tuesday was absolutely insane. We had two appointments for the radiation oncologist and then the lung cancer specialist.  And while we were talking with the lung cancer specialist, he heard that John and I were here from Colorado and were going to fly back, again, for the brain cancer specialist next week. He said, "I think I can find an opening for you with him. Let me go talk to him."  He talked with the brain cancer specialist, and lo and behold, we got the 1pm appointment we couldn't get through the regular channels, and while we decided to have lunch in the cafe in the cancer center, Kathy and John got texts about the new appointment.  This whole trip has been blessed with so many bits of luck. John and I got two of the last four seats on the non-stop that was most convenient for our flight in. This Friday's flight was half the price of all the other flights around this crazy travel holiday. Our room at our hotel was the very last room left at this Homewood Suite...